The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Conversation with Bradley Tusk — The Intersection of Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Politics

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer, joins Scott to discuss the current state of venture capital, the upcoming presidential election, and his novel Obvious in Hindsight – which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect.  Scott opens with his thoughts on concentration in the stock market, how the specific crowds out the general, and whether regulators should be going after companies for “addictive design.”  Algebra of Happiness: be there for your kids. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 288. Route 288 is a north- highway located in new york in 1988 cds outsold vinyl records for the first time in the u.s my mates battlefield galactica cd won't eject from my 320 gigabyte dual processor playstation 4 nsfw okay now that all the women have stopped listening, does anyone know any good porn sites? Go, go, go! Welcome to the 288th episode of the Prop G Pod.

In today's episode, we speak with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. We discuss with Bradley the current state of venture capital, the upcoming presidential election, and his novel, Obvious in Hindsight, which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. I like Bradley Tusk a lot. He's very insightful. He was the deputy governor of Michigan, and then he ran the Bloomberg campaign, I think, in his 30s for Mayer, the successful campaign. And now he has a venture capital firm and kind of offers this unique value proposition. And that is he goes into highly regulated industries or appeals to highly regulated companies and highly regulated industry like an Uber or DraftKings, whatever it is. And he helps them. It's a lesson in the specific crowds out the general. I think when you're starting a company

in a very large sector, you need to kind of focus or specialize or own a niche. As a matter of fact, let me back up here. I did an analysis when I started L2. I got this study from, I think it was from Deloitte, and they looked at all the private market transactions. They looked at all the acquisitions of private companies, and they looked at the multiple on revenues that was paid for those companies, and it divided them into quintiles. And it tried to suss out what were the common features across the companies in the top quintile that went for quote-unquote an irrational multiple. And there were several things. One, they dominated a niche. They were known for a specific competence, or they addressed a specific small part of the market,

the specific crowds out the general. Two, they had recurring revenue. Companies that have recurring revenues are valued at a multiple of revenues as opposed to companies that are transactional. Like a software company has recurring revenues, a retail company has transactional episodic revenues, and the ones with recurring revenues are valued at a multiple of revenues. The ones with transactional revenue were valued at a multiple of EBITDA. Three, they were very technology-focused. They leveraged technology or they were in the technology business. Obviously, software continues to eat the world.

And generally speaking, companies in the tech sector get a higher valuation. And then four, and this shocked me, they were international. Why? Because being international gives you a certain diversification of revenues. And if you have a company that appeals to, or if you have a product and service that appeals to companies across border, it means you have something that has probably greater chance for scale and growth, and it also smooths out the rough patches. So when I started my last company, L2, I said, okay, we're going to focus on the luxury sector. We're going to move from a consulting transactional model to a yearly annual recurring revenue model. We're going to use technology. The reason why I raised $17 million from General Catalyst was to make a huge investment in scraping and software

technology such we could go pull data and have the largest data set across our index. And I opened a London office probably sooner than I would otherwise, such that we could have a strong base of European clients. And we ended up selling for eight times revenues. My first company, Profit, was transactional, was consulting fees. We had some international clients, but not a lot. It was not technology-focused. It was very human-focused. It was super bright people. It was very human focused. It was super bright people trying to help big corporations sort through their brand issues. And we sold for 2.8 times revenues. Anyways, anyways, long-winded way of saying the specific crowds out the general. I am back in London after a week in the Maldives, but not for long because I'm off to Lisbon and

Madrid this weekend. I am going to Madrid for the first time in a long time. I had dinner with a guy last night who is the owner of Athletico Madrid. And talk about thoughtful. This guy's a total baller, total baller. And he took the time to get a signed shirt, a signed jersey and kit for my 13-year-old. I put it on my kid's bed this morning. He woke up. He put it on. He wanted to wear it to school. He just couldn't have been happier. And not only was it nice to give this to my son, but it really cemented my fondness for this man. I thought this guy went out of his way and was really thoughtful and thought my son would love it and was thinking of me.

And I thought, you know, I just saw this study on who's the most popular kids in high school. This is a bit of a segue, but stick with me. And generally speaking, the kids that are most popular in high school aren't the best looking. They're not the most athletic. They're not the best students. It's the kids who like other kids the most. It's the kids that are friendly and not intimidated and generally show affection and want to be friends and are nice and like other kids and are impressed by other kids. And they express that admiration. They have the confidence to be nice to other people and like them. And it sounds so basic, but I have found this to play out through life. And that is the easiest way to get someone to like you is, quite frankly, just to like them. It's to show an interest in their life, to pay attention to what they're saying. When they make a joke, you know, to lean in and laugh and make them feel good about themselves and to express affection and to compliment them. The greatest underleveraged asset in the world, simply put,

is good intentions. What do I mean by that? All of us think nice things about other people. We think, wow, that guy or gal is impressive. And then something gets in the way, especially with men, where we think, well, it would diminish my macho, it would diminish my masculinity, or they're so impressive they don't need to hear that, or somehow it's a zero-sum game where if I give them a compliment, somehow it reduces my quality as a person. What bullshit. If you want to be liked, if you want to be appreciated, then demonstrate that affection and appreciation for other people. That has almost nothing to do with the Maldives. The beginning of the vacation, the beginning of the vacation was great. Really supportive. We're all getting along well. The

kids are great. You know, can I stay up late? No problem. Can I go on TikTok? Sure, you deserve it by the end of the vacation. And I said this before, it's a super max prison where I'm going to tase their ass if they don't eat their goddamn lunch. So enough vacation. I am long family. I'm glad to be back in work. Going to Madrid this weekend with a couple guy friends. I'm leaning into my guy relationships. I'm going with my friend Orlando Moixante, who I've known for 20 years. And he and I are going to, where are we staying? I don't know where we're staying. I think we're going to go out for dinners that will involve a lot of ham and a lot of, they should be wine, but it'll just be a lot of alcohol, but it's going to be great. I've been to Madrid in a long time. Anyways, hola a mi. So coming to Madrid to rejuvenate, by the way, Madrid is supposedly one of those places that has an incredible lifestyle arbitrage right now. It's a super cool city. It's still sort of reasonable. Supposedly a lot of people

in Latin America who have money are moving to Spain, specifically Madrid. So I'm really excited to go to Madrid. Anyways, from the Maldives, back for a few podcasts and then off to Madrid. If I sound like I live a privileged life, trust your instincts. In other news, by now we know the Magnificent Seven, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla dominate the financial markets. But by how much, you may be asking. Por cuanto mucho, Professor Galloway, son el perro, Deutsche Bank recently reported that the profits and market capitalization of these seven firms outpace all listed companies in nearly every G20 country. Think about that. Think about that. These firms basically are bigger than almost any other market other than the U.S. market. CNBC

reported that the combined market cap alone would make the Magnificent Seven the second largest stock exchange in the world. Microsoft and Apple, for example, each have market capitalization similar to all the combined listings of companies in France, Saudi Arabia, and the U.K. Think about that. Think about that. Microsoft and Apple, right, each of them bigger than huge developed stock markets. I believe that Apple is bigger than every company listed on the FTSE here in the U.K. These things are just extraordinary.

And I think it speaks to, you know, I write a lot about what ails America, and there's some things about America I don, and San Francisco, what is it about that community that continues to attract the kind of people in the alchemy of risk-taking technology, capital, vision that brings together these companies that build the market capital? NVIDIA is worth more than every Chinese company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Index. Think about that. I mean, there's definitely something unique about not only America, but specifically California, specifically San Francisco. Is the concentration good? No, it's bad. It shouldn't be called the S&P 500. It should be called the S&P 7. And I'm a big fan of antitrust. I'm not suggesting you want to break up open AI, but does Microsoft, is Microsoft getting to the point where DOJ scrutiny is somewhat warranted? Don't know. Don't know. Six of the seven magnificent seven, their fourth quarter earnings changed from a year

earlier, averaged 62% to the upside. Get that, right? The other 495 S&P 500 companies had an average decline of 9%. In sum, it's basically the S&P 6, and then the rest of the market sucks. So what does that mean? There's this misperception that the markets are does that mean? There's this misperception that the markets are healthy right now. There's this misperception that the markets performed well last year. But here's the thing. If you didn't have one of those seven stocks,

you're fucked. Basically, you're flat to down. What does that mean? It speaks to the importance of an investment strategy where you go for index funds and ETFs. Because if you went into an index fund, then guess what? 33% of your capital is invested in these seven companies. Why? Because these seven companies make up 33% on a weight-adjusted basis of the S&P 500. So what do you want to do? You don't want to be a hero. Give up the notion that you're some sort of genius around stock breaking and buy low-cost ETF and index funds. Okay, moving on. Two companies that are in the news for alleged addictive behavior, TikTok and Match Group.

Filed by six plaintiffs, there's a class-action lawsuit against Match Group, the owner of Hinge, Tinder, and The League, which argues that these dating apps participate in predatory business practices and push for compulsive use. The complaint states that the gamification of these platforms transform users into gamblers locked into a search for psychological rewards that Match makes elusive on purpose. Over in the land of TikTok, the EU is investigating whether the firm's addictive design exposed children to harmful content. As a reminder, the EU, with its Digital Services Act, has been all over social media companies that spread misinformation.

The act allows for fines of up to 6% of a company's total global revenues if they fail to prevent the spread of harmful content. This act is particularly concerning with protecting children's well-being. Okay, here's my take. I don't see how you're going to find a company guilty of promoting addictive behavior. We knew nicotine was addictive, but ice cream is addictive. I'm addicted to working out. Does that mean Equinox is guilty of figuring out a way that my norepinephrine gets released and they should be guilty of my addictive behavior to working out? Should Makers Mark or Diageo that makes a coppa be guilty because there's something definitely addictive about alcohol.

I don't think that works. What I think works is the following, and that is, if you're essentially using these techniques to get people under the age of 18 addicted to a platform that then doesn't put in place the safeguards such that they don't end up not only having suicidal ideation, but you increase those thoughts around suicidal ideation, and then you send them emails with images of nooses, pills, and razors, and a 14-year-old kills herself, as she did here in the UK, then the platform should have liability. We should remove Section 230 protections for things like harm of children, anyone under the age of 18, things to do with the election, spreading misinformation, the results in what we call, I don't know, I think they just have more of an obligation around telling the truth,

even when they know they're spreading misinformation. What should we do if these addictive mechanisms, which quite frankly, every company and every app builds into its app, I don't see how you're going to, I mean, you're going to go after everybody if you start going after people who try to make them addictive. But what kind of harm does that addiction levy on people? If your nicotine is addictive and then you know that the actual combustible to deliver that nicotine is giving people cancer and you go out of your way to delay and obfuscate those findings and you knew it was giving people cancer, then boom, you're liable and a plaintiff's attorney or a class action suit should hit you hard. So if Match is making dating addictive, okay, but what's the harm? These are adults. They're not children. They're not children. If they put up fraudulent profiles, and supposedly they've been doing this, that say, okay, there's more opportunity here than there really is, such that we get you to sign up and renew, then that's fraud. I think they're going down the wrong path here, trying to go after companies by saying they're guilty if

they implement addictive designs. I have an online education company section. We want it to be addictive. We want people to get used to, or we want them to be on the site and have an experience on the site and experience with our classes where they think, wow, I feel a lot of self-esteem. I feel like this camaraderie, right? Hopefully that's addictive. A 2022 paper by the American Economic Review revealed that roughly 31% of social media use comes from the lack of self control. And this brings us up to our post from last week on gambling or gaming. I believe the fastest growing industry in the world, over $10 billion, other than AI, is, wait for it, gaming, or specifically gambling. And just as putting banking applications on smartphones and giving people the ability to transfer their funds from Silicon Valley Bank to JP Morgan in about seven minutes, and then when a bunch of incel panic room weirdos, libertarian, tech libertarian in their 50s decided to try and get fame by saying that there were going to be lines around the block for banks. And everyone thinks, well, what's the downside of transferring

my money out of SVB? Boom, you'll have a bank run. That was an unintended consequence of the lack of friction that smartphones present. The same is true of gaming, which is a kind of a fancy word for gambling. Also, also, as with many of these apps, it specifically targets young men, right? Think about Coinbase, right? Think about even a Netflix. Think about a Reddit, a Discord. Think about, you know, many of these apps either target young women or young men. Why? Why? Because in our nation, it's open season on young people.

Specifically, it's open season on young men. If there were 100,000 seniors dying with adult diapers imported from China because they had some type of allergic reaction to a illegal plastic being put on these diapers in order to make them cheaper? Do you think we would put up with that shit? Oh, my God, Congress would move so fast. Why? Why? Because Congress is the fucking land of the golden girls and the walking dead, and they don't protect young people. They specifically don't care about young men. Why? Because the most powerful companies in the world target this bias or this proclivity towards addiction because their brains aren't fully formed yet. Why? Because these people don't care about them. Why? Because anthropologically, we see men as disposable.

In addition, they have no representation in Congress. The average age of an American is 38. The average age of our elected representative is 64. Jesus Christ, just look at the ridiculousness of our presidential election right now where we have dead versus dead are running. Jesus, have we gone fucking insane? Have we gone insane? It is open season on young people and specifically open season on young men. And the lack of regulation, the lack of education around gaming just cements this. So what should we do? I don't think you're going to fanilize young men. If you

can go to war at the age of 18 and kill yourself, if you can just decide to sit and eat ice cream and sequester from friends and eventually get diabetes and die of depression, that's your right. And the best regulation is life lessons. But we need more education. In high school, we need lessons. We need health. We need adulting courses, whatever you want to call it, that teach the difference between men and women and say the male brain is more prone to addiction. Eighty-five percent of people who get in trouble with gaming are men, are men. And this is a terrible addiction. And what does that mean?

What does that mean? You have to be cognizant of the risks. And also, let's look at the data. If you gamble for long enough, you're just going to lose. There's just no getting around it. So think of it as consumption. And by the way, I love gambling. I love it.

It's a ton of fun. And here's a general rule. If I'm going to gamble with 100 bucks, I expect to lose it all. And that way, if I lose it all, I'm fine. I'm fine. But let's be clear. It's time to close down the season. It's time to reject the permits that our nation keeps offering to people to have open

season on our youth and specifically our young men. We'll be right back for our conversation with Bradley Tusk. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. Bradley, where does this podcast find you? I am at my office on 20th and Park. Let's bust right into it. Most people know you as kind of a political operative slash player, but you're also a venture capitalist and you're raising, what, your third fund? Raising our fourth, investing out of our third. Oh, good for you. So give us the state of the union or where you think the atmospherics are around venture capital right now. So, I mean, I think that we're hopefully

towards the tail end of a period where there's been a lot of lack of liquidity, not a lot of M&A, very few IPOs. I think if interest rates are cut, and that should happen at some point, according to the next 12 months, that will probably open things back up. If you are me and you're a VC, you haven't enjoyed the last few years because you haven't made any money. However, from a macro standpoint, it was probably pretty good for venture capital technology and the economy overall, because we had way too many startups valued at way too much money. We had way too many venture capital funds who really had no reason to exist. And what this is doing is, A, it's going to get rid of a lot of the stuff that shouldn't have existed, and B, it's going to right-size valuations. So rather than a company going public at $70 billion and then being immediately cut by public markets by 80%, things will be where they should be in the first place.

And isn't the tail of the wag's the dog, the IPO markets? We need a half a dozen to a dozen monster venture-backed IPOs to inspire liquidity and froth and kind of the animal spirits. And we kind of had a head fake in Q3 of last year. A couple of firms got out, but they're broken IPOs, or many of them are. You see that coming in the back half of this year? Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, there's definitely talk about it. I have one company, Circle, that I think this is public, has said they filed their S1. They're big in the crypto space. So yeah, I think so. But I still think that, like you said, it's almost everyone's waiting for someone to go first. And I think generally people are waiting for Powell to go. But at the same time, if some IPOs got put on the books and they did well,

then I think everyone else would follow suit pretty quickly. What do you think? OK, so there's Circle. I saw that Sheehan filed, which is a monster. And, you know, that's a big one. Do you know anything about Sheehan? What are your thoughts there? Not really.

I mean, it's an interesting company and seems like they sort of built a good model between kind of physical and digital. But, you know, look, if they can launch a monster IPO and that loosens up the marketplace, like, great. And give us your state of the union regarding the crypto space. I think that overall, there was clearly a major decline. There's a decline in two ways, right? So there was the financial decline, which we saw as the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum fell. There's been some rebounding recently in terms of that. And then in my world, where I tend to focus on the regulatory aspects of tech, there had been this kind of internecine battle between the CFTC and the SEC for who would be the kind of primary crypto regulator in the U.S. The crypto community preferred the CFTC.

The traditional bankers preferred the SEC. I think when Sam Bankman Freed happened, that kind of threw the game over to the SEC, right? That all of a sudden that discredited the sector enough that Gary Gensler was able to kind of make his case that he should be the one to be cracking down on crypto. And so that, I think, has sort of been accepted at this point. But with that said, you know, they've filed suit against companies they think are doing things wrong, which is totally what they should be doing. But overall, there hasn't been as much proactive crackdown by the SEC against crypto as I would have expected. And then, of course, all they really have is not all, but it's the power of their rulemaking and their enforcement because they're

not getting anything through Congress. No one's getting anything through Congress one way or the other. And then, look, if Trump wins, who knows? I don't even know what his views on crypto are. He doesn't know what his views on crypto are. So like he could appoint, it certainly won't be Gary Gensler, but he could appoint someone around the SEC who's wildly pro-crypto or anti-crypto. Like, you know, with Biden, it'll presumably be a continuation of what we have, but it's possible in 12 months that like everything's different. And so you're raising a fourth fund. You're small. You've raised kind of your bite size, if you will, as you raise. Your first fund was $35 million and $70 million, then $139 million for Fund 3. How much are you trying to raise in Fund 4? Target is $200 million.

Okay. So $200 million is real money, but in the world of VC, it's... Small. It's a pimple on the elephant. So in order to do that, you have to have a niche. You have to specialize. What is your pitch? What value add do you bring as opposed to just investing in General Catalyst? Yeah, I mean, we are, as far as I know, the only venture fund that handles all of the regulatory political media work for our portfolio company. So I spent the first part of my career, as you know, working directly in politics. I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager and reformator of New York. I was the deputy governor of Illinois.

I was Chuck Schumer's communications director in the Senate. And then pivoted to tech by running the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride-sharing all over the U.S. Did it again with Clear to get them to airports. And then it finally hit me that there was a nexus between tech and regulation that I hadn't realized before and launched an early-stage venture fund that in many ways were like every early-stage venture fund. We're looking at the founder, at the TAM, at the underlying concept and technology.

But we asked two questions that I think are unique to us. First, is there a gating regulatory issue or opportunity that if it were solved can really drive growth and valuation? And if so, can we solve it? And when the answer is yes to both, that's really to make sense for us to invest. So our first deal ever was FanDuel.

Then we legalized fantasy sports betting in 16 states. Our second deal ever was Lemonade. Got them their insurance licenses everywhere. Roman legalized prescription via text and so on. So we are useful if you are a founder where your company is either taking on entrenched interests that are regulated. We're going to try to use the political process to keep you out of business or put you out of business. Or if you're in a white space entirely, whether it's crypto or AI or autonomous vehicles, and there's no regulatory framework at all, and you've got to create one that works for you and for your industry, that's when we tend to deploy capital. And the sales

pitch is pretty simple. You know, I meet with a founder and say, okay, if you succeed, you're going to have the following six regulatory and political problems. You have two ways to approach them. Way one would be hire a bunch of different law-based political consulting firms, pay them millions of dollars. Hopefully, they'll solve the problem for you. Or I can give you 5 million bucks and do it for free. As a result, we tend to win most of our deals. In terms of an actual space, other than a company that might need some help on the regulatory side, are there specific industries or sectors that you're most bullish on?

Yeah. So digital health, I would say, is our number one sector because it is one so big, right? Each individual category is a massive industry unto itself. Two, so fragmented. Three, so regulated. And four, so screwed up that there's just tons of opportunity for us to be involved. So for example, we invested in Roman, which is a men's health company. Now they've pivoted to GLP-1s. And for them, it was, can you legalize prescription via tax? Because no one knew. For Alma, which is a mental health company that does all the back office work for therapists, so the billing and scheduling and insurance and all of that, it's about cross-state licensure and making sure the therapist in one state can treat patients in another online. For Wheel, which is a telemedicine staffing company,

it was about ensuring that when California and other states tried to declare all sharing economy workers as full-time employees, that nurses and nurse practitioners stayed out of that legislation and weren't part of it because that would have totally destroyed the business model. So what we found is there's just so many different ways that we can play in the space. So that's kind of become our number one sector. FinTech after that, transportation, gaming. And we can really do anything that is regulated. But obviously, the more and more we learn about a particular sector, the more valuable

our expertise becomes. So I'm just curious to get your take. Well, actually, let's go metaphors. You wrote a book called Obvious in Hindsight, which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. Give us a sense for what you think after spending so many years in politics, what was now obvious in hindsight? What I have found is people in the tech and venture world fail to understand how people in politics and regulation think, make are actually obvious and predictable, or more importantly, in my real life of running the venture fund, things that we can influence and change, right? So this story is about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York, LA, and Austin. On one side is the flying car startup and their vicious political consultants. The other side is Uber and Taxi United against it, the Audubon Society, the Socialists, the TransUnions, and the Russian mob.

And it's a satirical novel, but ultimately it's really about how do the politics at the local level work where flying cars are clearly on their way to becoming a thing, but it's going to gore a lot of people's ox, right? Whether it's the Audubon Society worrying about sort of the destruction of birds in

the sky or taxis worrying about the value of their medallions or transit unions worried about self-flying cars. And, you know, the book is really how does the startup and their consultants navigate the process so they make the political process work for them and so they're able to convince the people they need that doing what they want is more likely to help them result in getting reelected. Because that's really all whatever it comes down to in politics.

If a politician thinks that you can either help them win their next election or you could cost them their next election, which in reality is just the primary because of the gerrymandering, they'll work with you and they'll do what you want.

And if they don't think you can have an impact on that, you are completely irrelevant. And so the book is really how do you pull those levers of power? So you struck a chord there because I've always thought it enrages me that it takes me anywhere between 27 minutes and two hours to get to LaGuardia. At some point, and helicopters seem somewhat inefficient or strange, loud, dangerous, the VTOL space, whatever you call it,

it strikes me that someone's going to win there. I'm just curious. I know this is a bit of a digression. Who do you think, or what are the dynamics there? It sounds like you think it's going to happen, and who do you think will be the winners and losers? Yeah. So I do think, if now I think it's going to happen, it is happening. And I think in a lot of ways, what eVTOL is today are quiet helicopters, right? So the challenge with helicopters from a political standpoint is they're really loud and noisy and no one in Queens, when you're trying to take your helicopter from wherever you are in Manhattan to LaGuardia or JFK, wants it going over their house because helicopters aren't that high up in the sky. E-VTOL, the first E stands for electric. So as a result, it's silent. So the first piece is, you know, is that enough to make the politics work? I think the answer is yes. So Joby, for example, is a company, I don't have any investments in the space one way or the other, but that did an event here in New York with Mayor Adams a couple of months ago where he was touting it and

saying this is something the city would want to promote because we need ways to get people to the airports faster because building trains to the plane hasn't worked and would cost tens of billions of dollars. And if you could use ZVTOL instead, that would make a big difference. So the first piece is, can you get through the regulatory? On the FAA side, they are issuing certifications that vehicles are flight worthy. I mean, they're just making progress. On the local regulatory side. The fight is just starting. That's what the novel is about.

But I think we have seen politicians like Eric Adams embrace it. And then the other question becomes the time for you, right? So you're right that the trip to LaGuardia is super variable. You also know that you could take an Uber to Battery Park from your apartment and then a Blade to LaGuardia. But there's multiple segments there, right? So the reason I never do that is because I got to get to Uber to Battery Park.

Then I got to get out and wait for the Blade. Then the Blade's got to take off me a time. Then land on LaGuardia. Then I got to get to my terminal. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Why don't I just sort of, I can, if I get in a car in front of my apartment or my office, I can just be on the call, be on calls and work the whole way throughout. And so I always land on that. They've got to get the point of predictability where the friction is reduced enough that you and I say, okay, I'm going to have multiple moving parts because I know it's only going to be 23 minutes guaranteed total,

as opposed to up to two hours. They're not at that yet. It's funny because I know it's only going to be 23 minutes guaranteed total as opposed to up to two hours. They're not at that yet. It's funny because I'm living in London and I want to be supportive. So I'm thinking about making some investments in startups. And this is not a startup, but the company I've actually been looking at and it's publicly traded. I think it's a broken SPAC, but I just like the company as vertical aerospace. Is this like a winner-take-all thing where there'll be one company that gets a contract from, I don't know, or gets an investment or Boeing,

or do you think there's going to be multiple winners here? No, I mean, first of all, there's, I think over $8 billion has already been invested in the space. Some of it from the strategics like Boeing or Airbus or whoever. Some of it from venture capitalists who focus on this area. And there's different segments, right? So like, you know, there are some that just focus on cargo, right? There are some that are self-flying, there are some that have pilots. There are some people that envision a world like the Jetsons, where you just have your own self-flying car and hop in and drive, you know, and go from point A

to point B. Other people see it more like a bus bus where there's a pickup and a drop-off location. So there's a lot of different competing visions for it. So I don't think it's winner-take-all. And I think that we don't really know yet which vision is going to win. Like, I think back to the early days when we did Uber, we started off with the black car service and it was successful, but the market was somewhat limited.

And it was only when we shifted to UberX did the whole thing really explode. But in the very, very early days of Uber, Travis didn't know that that's the direction the business was going to go in, right? So I think people are going to try out all of these different models, and some of them are just going to work for consumers and some of them are not. Some are going to work politically, some are not. But yeah, I think you'll have multiple winners. So I appreciate you indulging me there. Let's get back to your ballywick. You were and are a player in politics. Give us your no mercy, no malice view of the election right now, the handicap, the presidential race, what you think is going on. And then more specifically, I would just love to get your commentary on the most recent public flogging of the big tech firms. Yeah, sure. So on the first one, look, I think that we may be entering a world of one term presidents, governors, mayors, because the public is fundamentally unhappy.

Right. So a few things. One is social media, I would argue, is basically the unhappiness machine. It does two things. It forces you to compare your life to someone's fictional life. So you feel inadequate immediately. And then it shows you everything bad happening everywhere in the world all at once, compounded by the views of a million idiots. So you feel bad about your own life. You feel bad about yourself. Then the next step is existential risk. So when you and I were kids, there was one major existential risk, which was nuclear war. That risk still remains. It's probably worse right now because the proliferation of nukes is getting there, and eventually Iran's going to have it, North Korea has it. But now you layer on top of that

climate change, the risk of a real serious pandemic. I mean, COVID had a major impact, but while it's highly transmissible, it wasn't that lethal, right? But I am sure that a version of COVID that is much more lethal exists in a lab in China or the US or Russia or Israel or the UK or somewhere, or more likely all of them. And so the risk of any of those getting out. And then with AI, like I'm a believer in AI, but none of it's too early for any of us to really know yet what it's going to be. So the amount of existential risk has increased significantly. And then the third bucket would be a lot of the choices that we made in the 1990s, which is sort of the last time that we had a period of real kind of world peace and coordination, was to embrace free trade and globalization and the birth of the internet.

And globally, that's worked really well. Billions of people are better off than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago, where there's fewer people living in extreme poverty, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates, all those metrics. But those tend to benefit the people who were the worst off to begin with. And when you take a market that's closed and open it up, then people who are succeeding in the closed market aren't going to do as well. And a lot of those are Americans, right? So when Donald Trump does a MAGA America first kind of platform, I don't really think that him saying or doing these things is going to change the underlying economics of anything. But I understand the political appeal to it, which is people who

felt like a generation or two or three ago, they were guaranteed a certain level income, a certain lifestyle. And now that no longer exists. And then you layer in the opioid crisis, terrible public schools, wildly expensive health care, you know, guns, immigration, everything else. And like, it is no surprise to me that people feel scared and upset and unhappy. And every politician runs for office promising to fix all these problems. And the problem is between low voter turnout, gerrymandering, dominant special interests, and tons of extremism and polarization, they can't really do anything. So everyone fails all of the time. The public gets angry. They want blood. So they hold the incumbent accountable and the incumbent loses. So Trump was a one-term president. Biden very well may be as well. And we may have five more of these until things right to shit. So when you say that Biden may very well be a one-term

president, I mean, although I'm a moderate, I think of myself as fairly sane, which means I'm for Biden. I know we're all supposed to understand and reach out to the other side. I think to reelect an insurrectionist just makes no fucking sense to me. So the fact that someone who's much more in touch and quite frankly, I think you're better regulating your emotions than I am, sees that there's a decent chance that Trump will be reelected. If you were advising the Biden campaign and for all intents and purposes, maybe you are, what do you think the message needs to be? Yeah. So there's two things. So the first question is, I mean, what he should really do if his interest was the public good and not his own good. And he's a politician, which means his interest is his own good. It's not right. Right. Because when the election is a referendum on Trump, which we not only saw in 2020, but we saw in the midterms in 2018 and 2022, Trump loses. There are more people that choose not to have him than have him. But when the elections are referendum on both Trump and Biden, the incumbent president, in a time where people feel really unhappy, then all of a sudden the math changes a lot and it gets a lot better for Trump. So the

best thing I would argue Biden could probably do is not run at all. And you let like a total cipher, like a Gretchen Whitmer, someone that just no one has any opinion on, let them be the nominee because the point is you want to make the entire election just about Trump and nothing else. Do you still think there's I mean, we've all secretly hoped that I mean, deep down, I wish he'd picked what I would think is a VP that better resonates with the U.S. And then stepped aside and said, I'm going to go down in history as the greatest president ever, best economy in the world, more jobs created exponentially than anyone. I saved you from this orange nightmare. Now I'm handing the reins over to Governors Newsom, Whitmer. Is there still time for that? Two things. So one is, is there any human nature in history that would say this is possible? The only real example I can ever point to is

George Washington, right? Otherwise, everyone clings to power no matter what. Yeah. And so in a weird way, I think the best the Democrats could do would be not to put a new person forward until the convention in July, because you want the shortest general election possible because you want it to be just about Trump, not about Trump and the Democratic nominee. And so I actually think the less time the public has to get to know and start to dislike whoever the new person is, the better off you are. So, you know, at the convention, Biden could step down and then there would be a giant fight. What would be cool about it is the whole world would be watching because it'd be like the first time since the 50s that a convention actually picked the nominee. America loves a winner.

And even now in our totally artificial conventions, you still come out of it with a three or four point balance for a little while. And then you'd have a much shorter general election with a lot more attention being paid to it. So I think he could, but I don't think he will. Right. So then the question becomes, what's the winning message for Biden? And I'm an independent at this point. If you think I hate your favorite party, I do. But where Democrats keep getting wrong is they just keep insisting that if the people only knew about one more terrible thing Trump said or did, then they would finally wake up and get it and nobody would vote for this guy and he would lose.

They get it. When 47 percent of voters are telling NBC News, we prefer Trump over Biden compared to the 42 percent who are picking Biden. They know every bad thing Trump's ever done. They know he's been indicted on 91 different felony counts. They know all the horrific things he said. And they have still made the decision that in their mind, their life was tangibly better off under Trump than it has been under Biden. And therefore, that's what they care about.

And what you've got to show those people is actually your life under Trump would be a lot worse. So like, for example, if you take Trump's own advisors that they're worried about their plans, if he were to win, dismantling the federal bureaucracy sounds great, but let's use air travel. So we're talking about that as an example. If you cut the number of TSA agents in half, that means the line is twice as long. And if you cut the number of air traffic controllers in half, that means ultimately the number of flights that can run at any given time are only half as many, which means flights become more expensive and a lot less frequent. I've said to people, OK, if you'd like to spend now three or four hours at the airport because of Trump's changes and have to pay twice as much for your flight, which now is only going to run every other day instead of every day, then vote for Trump. And I think that there are corollaries to that in almost every single sector where you've got to show people your real life is going to get worse in these very specific ways. Just taking this guy at his word for what he and his team

say they're going to do, if people feel like, oh, I don't want that. And so I do think that there are tangible policy arguments that you can make to people, but people ultimately are voting on what's best for their pocketbook, what's best for their family, what's best for their life, not for democracy as an institution. And the left just never seems to understand that until you can pivot to a message of here's how your life would be worse. I don't think they can win. We'll be right back. and those 100,000 soccer moms in those five states, whatever it is, don't you think at the end of the day, and again, I'm talking my own book here, don't you think at the end of the day they go, you know, the economy, maybe it's not as good as they're claiming, but it's not bad. So I hope so. And by the way, that number can be as small as 45,000 soccer moms.

So we're really talking about six states and maybe 30 counties total that matter here. Look, before Trump, no U.S. president who was governing over, presiding over a good economy, and we were not engaged in a ground war with our own troops ever lost re-election. And then Trump, now COVID obviously made everything even especially weird, but the economy had generally been pretty good. We weren't at a ground war with anyone, and yet he lost because he's Trump, right COVID obviously made everything even especially weird, but the economy had generally been pretty good. We weren't at a ground war with anyone and yet he lost because he's Trump, right? And so I think the script has just been flipped and people's unhappiness now kind of overrides everything else. And you're right. There is a cognitive dissonance where all of the economic metrics on job growth and the stock market and even inflation now don't line up with how people feel.

I mean, consumer spending is tremendous, despite the fact that people tell pollsters that they feel bad about the economy. So the hope is that those views start to rebound. But the reality is the main metric people seem to vote on is inflation. And the real thing there is gas prices and food prices. And those two are still a lot of risk. I mean, every time the Houthis send up a missile and take down a tanker, you know, gas prices go up. And so I'm not sure that's going to fix itself in time for the election. And I just think, generally speaking, we're in this era where things feel so bad that even if they're not that bad, like, I don't know, you know, you're in London most of the time now, but like New York City, the actual crime metrics are not that bad.

If you compare crime to the last couple of years, it's safe. However, we live in a world where there's 5,000 illegal wheat shops that are just allowed to operate. And that just makes it feel lawless. Like who's in charge here? They're scaffolding on every block

that no one ever bothers to remove. There are junkies whacked out on track, falling asleep on the street. Every time you go to CVS to get a tube of toothpaste, you now have to get someone to unlock a case for you. And so it feels bad. The city feels unsafe. Eric Adams, our mayor, is at a 28% approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll. That's the lowest recorded approval rating of any mayor in New York City history. And the reason isn't because the city is subsequently that bad. It's because the perception is bad. And that's reflecting how people feel.

So I want to I'm going to ask you about your your 50 reflections of 50. But first, just to wrap up on politics, whenever I go to Washington, I'm actually I actually end up feeling better about America. Strangely enough. I meet with senators and congresspeople on both sides of the aisle, and I generally find that they're either very good actors or they seem like smart people trying to do the right thing. And I'm really impressed with senators Warner, Klobuchar, Bennett, people who just strike me as moderates and smart and are trying to do the right thing. Senator Blackburn, who I'm not a fan of, I think she's trying to do the right

thing on social media. I look at Senators Cruz and Graham, and I think they're just total fucking whores pretending to give a shit. Anyway, give us some hope here. What politicians would you want to bring some sunlight to that you think are willing to risk reelection to try and do the right thing? So the risk of cynicism, first of all, the three people you named, Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado, those are all effectively purple slash swing states. Purple. Yeah, moderates. Right. So as a result, they have the freedom to be reasonable because they're less hostage to the crazies in their party. Look, as you know, I was Michael Lumber's campaign matrimonial for mayor of New York. Mike, at this point, is too old time for president.

But in my view, he would have been the ideal person. And he's the only politician I've ever worked with in my life that genuinely said, and it helps when you have all the money that he has, but nonetheless, genuinely said, every decision is based on what I truly believe is best for the city. And you could disagree with his assessment of something, but it was truly how he decided absolutely everything. Yeah. If not, I'll go back to my life of private jets and St. Barts. I'm going to be just fine. Right. I don't have any trouble getting reservations in restaurants without the political title. Right. Or anything else. So, you know, there are some people like that who are exceptions to the rule. But my now pure nepotism, my brother-in-law, Josh Gottheimer, is a member of Congress. He's from New Jersey. He happens to be in one of the remaining 25, 30 swing districts. He is the chairman and founder of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is a bipartisan group that actually does try to get shit done.

Josh is what we should absolutely want. And Josh is actually on bills like infrastructure and cops. You know, he's actually helped move some stuff forward in a meaningful way. But Josh, too, you know, has the luxury of representing a swing district. He had to beat a seven-term Republican to win the seat. But once he did, you know, yes, he gets a crazy primary from the far left every time. But in his district, the concern of them winning is low enough that Josh can ignore that and just focus on- Who would you like to see president? And it can't be someone related to you.

I mean, I think of the, to me, of the people who are at least talked about right now, Whitmer probably is a combination. I don't even know her personally at all of someone who seems well qualified, has a good record in Michigan and also is a cipher. Because, again, as we discussed, you want to make the election solely a referendum on Trump. So Gavin Newsom has done some really good things. I mean, the stuff he did around housing and actually kind of making it possible to build in California, I think was excellent. But can you paint him as the typical California liberal smug, whatever it is? You could. So arguably the election becomes more about him. So the more it's about someone that everyone's like, yeah, fine, which probably that was Biden in 20. Nobody had any opinion. Everyone's opinion about it was like, yeah, fine, whatever. I think Newsom and you as his campaign manager, president of the fifth largest state,

most Nobel Prize winners, reelected with 62% or that recall vote, he got 62%. My sense is, and I want to get your response to this, that this is all about contrast because you're right, everybody hates the incumbent. You put Nikki Haley on the stage next to Biden, I think she kills him in an election. I think you put Newsom, quite frankly, it's this youth versus tired old people. You put Newsom or Whitmer on the stage with Trump, and people look at Trump angry and breathing hard and looking like he's going to have a stroke when he's injecting himself with a Govee and they go, you know, I think I'm going to go with that Whitmer. It just strikes me that the parties would be so much smarter to put up someone under the age of

100. Yeah. But but again, this gets back to the underlying point of our conversation, which is behavioral input shaped policy outputs, right? Whether it's economic or political, who are the people at the parties? They are the people who stand to gain the most if't care about what the person at the top of our ticket wants. They are totally dependent on that person. If Trump doesn't want Ronald McDaniel to be the chairman of the RNC, she's not going to be the chair of the RNC, right? And so fundamentally, yes, you're right. But, you know, and this is why I kind of keep pushing mobile voting, which is we all keep banging our heads against the wall and saying, why can't they be better? Right. And the answer is they're not capable of it. The kind of people who run for office are desperately self-loathing, insecure people who can't live out the validation of holding office.

And they're never going to pick the public good over their own personal good. And that's true throughout politics, which is why you can't ever get better people. What you can get are better incentives where you align the things that we want to see happen from a policy standpoint with the underlying politics so it actually makes sense for the news. That's why people like you cited, like Klobuchar and Bennett and Warner, they can actually get away with that, right?

You know, you got to align inputs and outputs. And if you don't do that, you know, all of the frustration and outrage in the world isn't going to change it. So just to wrap up here on a more positive note, for your 50th birthday, and I love this, you published a list of 50 reflections. Can you distill them down to your top three pieces of life advice? Yeah, sure. And by the way, a lot of it is, you know, lessons that I've learned the hard way over the years, and you can find it on Medium if you're interested. Look, I've spent a

ton of time studying happiness science and behavioral economics and behavioral psychology, and fundamentally, this is the way I see it. I don't believe in reincarnation. I don't believe in an afterlife. This is the one shot I've got here, and it's going to be at most 100 years, which is a blip of time in a 5-billion-year- old earth. And nobody owes me anything. It is my responsibility to make the most of my life that I possibly can. So number one is you got to be proactive. You got to make shit happen. You got to take risk. You got to put yourself out there. You have to be willing to fail. And I fail all the time because you can't succeed. If you're

never failing, you're not taking nearly enough risk in the first place. So the first thing is you can't expect anyone to do it for you. It's on you. But the second thing is we do have kind of a warped view in this society, this country as to what produces happiness, right? So what at least all of the data says is two things produce happiness, relationships and fulfillment. If there are people in your life that you really count on and you know they're going to be there for you and support you no matter what and vice versa, that really matters. And if you do things that you find fulfilling, and it doesn't have to be working in a soup kitchen, just things that are intellectually engaging and fulfilling for you, you know, make you feel good about the work that you're doing in some way, whatever it is,

that could be through your work, it could be through your hobbies, your faith, whatever it is. If you have those two things in your life, you're going to be happy. You know, the grant study that Harvard did. Grant study, of course. the same age, followed them over their entire lives, studied them, met with them constantly, and then said who was happy and why. And it was the people who had really good relationships and had a job that made them feel good about themselves. You have to figure out the highest ROI for yourself. And despite what sort of Instagram tells you, it's not really status and wealth. Those are good things to have for sure, but it's really relationships and fulfillment. And so if you can construct your life as much as possible around trying to maximize for relationships and fulfillment from a purely selfish standpoint, that will generate the most happiness, the best life for you. So if that's really to me, that whole piece about turning 50, that was the point. Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. He is the founder of the political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, as well as the co-founder of Tusk Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests solely in early-stage startups

and highly regulated industries. Bradley is also the author of The Fixer, My Adventure is Saving Startups from Death by Politics, and the novel Obvious in Hindsight. He recently opened a bookstore, podcast studio, event space, and cafe called P&T Knitwear on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He's also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Bradley, I always learn from you. I find you take a lot of the things I feel strongly about and are able to distill them down to more kind of actionable. And I just admire the way you think and the way you acquit yourself. Anyways, thanks so much for, for coming on and congrats on, on the bookstore. Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Algebra of happiness. I have a friend going through divorce, and I was thinking about all the different downsides of divorce. It's financially very stressful. It's emotionally very stressful. It's also very hard on the kids. It's especially hard on boys. When you look at single-parent households, girls have similar outcomes as girls in dual-parent households. It ends up that their likelihood to attend college, the amount of money to make, their likelihood of some sort of self-harm isn't that much greater when dad is no longer in the picture. And when we're talking about single-parent households, we're usually talking about single mother because usually it's the mother who gets custody of the children, which is a whole other talk show. But men kind of, or young men, if you were to point to a single point of failure when men sort of start a downward or young boys start a downward spiral, it's usually when they lose a male role model. And there's some wonderful people who oftentimes step into that. But what I was coaching my friend about, and also I know his wife and soon-to-be ex-wife,

is that everyone needs to take responsibility for trying to ensure that that male role model is still really involved. Now, obviously, the real responsibility comes down to first the man, the husband, and the wife. It's more than just about you. Marriage used to be a commitment. Now it's considered sort of a lifestyle enhancement. And once it's no longer working for the man and the woman, they oftentimes decide to split up. I think mature couples decide that, okay, it's more than just about us when they have kids, especially boys, not to say that they should be more prone to divorce if they only have daughters, but it does seem to be especially hard on boys. I think there's really additional incentive to figure it out.

If you can't, if you can't figure it out, then what I would suggest is it's up to—there's a real onus on the father and the mother. The dad needs to sacrifice professionally, logistically, to stay involved. When my parents got divorced, and granted, it was the 70s, and my dad didn't have a lot of male role models, but he immediately got offered a better job in Ohio and moved right away. It was a different age. I don't think most people would do that now, but my dad basically was like, I was living with my dad, and within like two months, my dad was living in a different state, and I saw him twice a year, maybe three times a year. And quite frankly, I've never forgiven him for it. I'm, you know, intellectually and theoretically I have, but there's just a certain level of lack of connective tissue there that'll never be restored because I just can't help but think, you know, when I was 80, sort of decided to abandon me to be blunt.

Also, I think there's some onus on the mother to not poison or contaminate the kids with a hate dad. And my mom did that for me. When my dad would come pick me up every other weekend when he was still living in Southern California, you know, I was eight years old and we lived in a big apartment complex. I would go down at night and she wouldn't go down with me because she didn't want to see his car. And I think most parents nowadays know better, but I think it's very easy to, or very difficult, I should say, to not let your emotions and your herd infect the kids one way or another and turn it into sort of an us versus them. And almost always, almost always, the kids are going to side with the mother because that's usually who they're dealing with. And society has a tendency to believe in any divorce, that it's the woman who's the victim

and the male who's the perpetrator, even though data shows that 70% of divorce filings are by women, usually after some sort of economic strain on the family. But both dad and mom have an obligation to ensure dad can stay involved in the kid's life. Here's a very scary stat. One in three men after six years or six years after the divorce, one in three men have absolutely no contact with their children. And, you know, we wonder why young men are coming off the tracks. Well, it's pretty simple. There aren't enough men involved in young men's lives. Men need male presence. They need male energy in their lives. And divorce tends to be this construct where if people don't make a real effort, it's easy to not have male involvement.

In addition, kids, as they enter into their teen years, need to be, in my opinion, and this is a tougher one to counsel people on, a little bit more forgiving and to realize that life is complicated and there probably isn't just one guilty party here and be more accepting. I'm heartbroken by a friend of mine who just got divorced. And quite frankly, his daughters want nothing to do with him. And he was a wonderful dad. And it's not because they don't love him, but it's because their friends and their mom kind of has priority on stuff and they can't imagine their weekends with their dad. And quite frankly, they just make no effort. And maybe that's understandable for

teen girls, but I really feel sorry for the father who seems to be trying everything he can. The divorce was not his idea. Divorce is ruinous on so many levels, but one thing you can't adjust for, and I do see a lot of parents that try to do this, let the kids stay in the house, trade off, and really make sacrifices financially, logistically, bearing your own emotions, your own resentment, your own anger, and recognize, recognize that when you get married, it's not only a commitment to that other person. And even if that commitment fails, your real commitment is to the kids. And so you got to try and put some of that shit away to ensure that the kids have a healthy relationship with both parents. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer,

and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show. a flat stomach for a great time. It takes a lot of work, very strict diet. It's very, but it's hot. Ooh, it's hot. She's got this little English spanner, this little cocker spaniel who just, can't keep his eyes off of her. Welcome to Dog Erotica. I'm your host, Scott Galloway.