This Week in Startups - Palantir’s Valuation, VC’s Go To Washington and Much More | E2065

Starting point is 00:00:00 I think opt-in empire building is a great goal for our nation. I think our goal should be to get to a billion Americans and have America be the most populous and the most innovative country in the world. Now, how do you get to a billion from 350 million? You've got to triple. And there's a certain amount of population growth through babies, but let's just say people aren't making a ton of babies.

Starting point is 00:00:22 So there's two ways to accomplish this. You've got to immigrate people or you've got to do a little empire building. opt in, of course. Maybe there's countries in Europe that would want to be. Maybe Greece wants to be part of the United States. Wouldn't that be great for me if Greece was the 51st state if they wanted to? Why Greece? Because I'm Greek.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Because we created, man. We created democracy. America perfected it. This would be full circle for me. I'm so sorry. I did not know your heritage. So I'm like, Gallic,

Starting point is 00:00:53 struggling demographics. Famous debt loan. I'm like, dude, I'm not picking. That's why I think it's an interesting concept. This week in startups is brought to you by Oracle. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs.

Starting point is 00:01:13 Save up to 50% on your cloud bill at Oracle.com slash twist. Dev Squad. Most dev agencies only offer developers. Why? Because product management is hard. Get an entire product team for the cost of one U.S. developer plus 10% off at devsquod.com slash twist. and Ramp, the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and money.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Get $250 when you join Ramp today at Ramp.com slash Twist. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. We call it Twist. You can call a Twist if you want to. We are doing the show three days a week in 2025, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, trying to get consistent. About 10 a.m. start Pacific. Sometimes we're a little bit late. Sometimes we get a little early and set up the show.

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Starting point is 00:02:36 With me again today, the one, the only. He's cautiously optimistic. Alex Wilhelm. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jason. Two things. One, we've finally gotten snow out here. So now what I see your background, I can also just see it out of my window. Fewer skiers, a similar look.

Starting point is 00:02:52 And I just wanted to give a holiday shout out to all of our friends out there. This is a short week for Twist. short week for pretty much everybody. If you're a Christmas person or if you are a Hanukkah person, may you please enjoy. This is a gift from a friend of mine who, beautiful, knows that I like Happy Meadow. But I think it's a good moment

Starting point is 00:03:09 to dig through the news and then we'll send everyone off for a short hibernation and then we're back on Monday. Oh, back on Monday, right? So you got us today, you get us Monday and we're going to do the Twistie Awards again, I think, on Monday, right? We are going to do Twisties. Great show Monday. We'll do our Twisties, the annual tradition. Before there were the besties, I had started the Twisties. You started

Starting point is 00:03:28 theme here, a lot of the all-in bits and stuff like that were built off this week in startups if you're an all-in fan here, especially by sacks and bag of fans who come here to troll me. Welcome. We love to talk a little bit of politics, but only in relation to technology here. Yes. We're not just going to talk about like random stuff or Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, or whatever. Here is for, you know, overlapping tech and politics, which we're going to do today, a whole bunch. And first up, over the weekend, I got, I stepped into the palin.

Starting point is 00:03:56 You know, sometimes I step in something, Alex. I don't know if you've ever seen this on X, but sometimes I step in something. I've seen it several times now. So I walked into a hornet's nest. I didn't realize Palantir had an army of individuals who are very enthusiastic, like our friends with Bitcoin or the XRP army. There's an enthusiastic, vivacious, effervescent group of individuals who love the company Palantier. Now, I'm no Palantir forever. Joel Lonsdale's a friend.

Starting point is 00:04:29 He's been on the ship program. He's a co-founder. And I love the CEO, Alex Carp, of Palantir. He's so based. But it is a somewhat expensive stock that people are really promoting. And when you see massive promotion, especially on social media like X or YouTube, it's like X and YouTube seem to be have won the conversation in finance. That's when I get a little bit of a little bit of,

Starting point is 00:04:56 radar going up. So I thought today we'd start with, since so many people were like dunking on me, there was an all-in clip that came out. Yes. Which we'll put in the show notes. I don't know if we should play it here or not. No, we don't need to go through that. We don't need to go through that whole thing.

Starting point is 00:05:10 But the clip was basically me joking about, I guess, we were talking about cloud flare or whatever. And I just made a joke about how Palantir was Deep State. Because, you know, Sacks loves to talk about the Deep State. Palantir is as Deep State as Deep State gets. Sacks is a shareholder. So Lonsdale is a co-founder office of a shareholder. everybody we know as a shareholder, it's a founder's friend of the company.

Starting point is 00:05:28 And I was just like, yeah, they're deep state too. But somebody tweeted as if I was saying the stock wasn't and trying to say I was making a stock call on. I wasn't making a stock call on it. I was just joking about it being there was no discussion about the stock price. Well, Jason, I had your tweet. So, Jason, here is your tweet about this. You make an argument that really speaks to my soul because you're talking about price earnings ratios and price sales ratios or just sales multiples here. Let's read the tweet.

Starting point is 00:05:54 Yeah. Okay. Jason says, I think we were joking about them, Palantir, being part of the deep state, not stock price, but at a 400 price earnings ratio, and a 65 excels multiple, exclamation points, looks like a good time to take some profits on the name. In fact, and this is spicy, insiders told me they are selling into this insanity. Yeah, I know. I overhearse. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:17 Yeah, Sachs was like redugging the tweet. And listen, he gets a lot of calls right. Obviously, it wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't smart. So a lot of people I've heard, you know, like at cocktail parties or whatever, you know, I literally heard folks saying, hey, I'm trimming at this level. I hear that. Now, I don't know if it's true or not. I don't know how much they have. I don't know if they're trimming one share or a billion shares.

Starting point is 00:06:39 I'm just saying the buzz I've heard from people who may be owned shares says, hey, this is a good time to maybe trim if you got in very early. You know, you could be certain if, you know, Robin Hood, Uber, you know, Doord. or other companies that I own shares in, including Facebook, Google, Apple, I own a bunch of different individual stocks that I've made trades on or I own from a no profit company. If it was trading at 65 times sales, you could bet I would be trimming my position.

Starting point is 00:07:12 Now, this is not financial advice, but I just wanted to ask you, since you're a deep data finance, and right, which is why you're here, where does Palantir's multiples, and this is a great company with other. a great CEO and a great team. Incredible growth. I know they're growing like close to 30% year over a year,

Starting point is 00:07:30 something in that ballpark. And, you know, this is just a discussion over the price because once I added Palantir, I don't own shares in it. Although I think I might own shares through like, you know, mutual funds and stuff like that, obviously. I was just trying to wonder how expensive this is right now. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Because that, when I did add it to my Apple stock, there was a lot of stories about, oh, my Lord, this is an incredible runner. Yep. So one thing I think that's important to show is just how quickly the company has appreciated in value. So we're going to go ahead and pull up a chart now on the screen. And this shows Palantir's price sales ratio. Now, Jason, for those who don't know, price sales in public market terms is last 12 months

Starting point is 00:08:14 revenue, four quarters, divided by, sorry, it's the evaluation divided by your sales, essentially. This chart goes vertical as we approach the last couple of months. And I think this cap of appreciation makes people greedy and very enthusiastic. But when you see a chart like this, Jason, that goes vertical in evaluation turns, it makes you wonder what's driving such insane near-term appreciation. Right. So we would know in the case of, say, Eli Lilly, it was the, you know, Ozempics or Zepbound or whatever.

Starting point is 00:08:47 We would know, because I'm assuming their chart does something similar there, although their sales did skyrocket. So then we might see a similar chart with an Nvidia as an example when they move from just doing, you know, their main category being gaming GPUs to server farms becoming the majority of their revenue. We've seen those charts before. So there can be explanations for massive acceleration. Somebody could get a huge contract, right? You could have somebody from, let's say, the Chips Act, you know, Intel or TSM could get a couple of billion dollars. loans or grants dropped on their head from the U.S. government to build a foundry

Starting point is 00:09:27 in the agency. So that is not unprecedented. And I guess Palantir sells into the government. Peter Thiel's biggest bets were Facebook, J.D. Vance, Trump, you know, Palantir, Founders Fund itself. I mean, he's got an incredible record. And I don't know if anybody's ever had a betting record that dipped into politics like this. Because now with these appointments, which we talk about next, it's looking like a lot. lot of T.L folks are in the,

Starting point is 00:09:55 are in the administration. Let's keep on. I want to stay on the price sales point. Because you asked about the NVIDIA chart. And if we could just share the screen again, here is NVIDIA's price sales ratio, Jason. Oh, well, actually, not what you and I both expected, which was a vertical ascent up into the right.

Starting point is 00:10:10 It's actually been relatively static since, I don't know, it's actually where it was in mid-2020, which is shocking to me. This just goes to show that NVIDIA's valuation is scaled as its revenue has also increased so quickly that it's actually kept up with the appreciation in its value. All right, let's talk about AI, everybody. It's everywhere self-driving cars, breakthrough medical research,

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Starting point is 00:11:48 at Oracle.com slash twist. Oracle.com slash twist. What this does is that people are looking at the valuation in relation to sales. They're very attuned to what the top line sales is, the sales line is, and then they're doing the math to say, what's the price of sales ratio here? What's reasonable, given their growth? And they were doubling revenue a year at one point, I believe. Oh, Invidia? More than that.

Starting point is 00:12:15 Yeah. So, I mean, it's three-digit growth year over year is unprecedented. It's absolutely insane. 15 to 30% is high growth in public market companies. InVIDIA grew like a startup, a series A startup going from 3 to, you know, 10 million or 10 to 30 million, which does happen. You showed the Google chart at one point last week. So this is disconnected from reality. But.

Starting point is 00:12:39 But, yeah, give me. No, no, you tell me what, because if this is, is it disconnected from reality? Yes. Okay. So that's- I don't want to check with you. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 00:12:50 So I went through their last earnings report. And I just want to point out that, as you said earlier, this is a really good company. So revenue growth last quarter, Jason, 30%, 7% quarter on quarter. And I would say more importantly, inside the U.S., revenue growth is 44% in year every year. So very impressive. Unbelievable. Yeah. The customers count up 30% year over year and gap profitable.

Starting point is 00:13:13 So their net income had a 20% margin. in the last quarter, and they have about a billion dollars in trailing operating cash flow. So profitable, kicking off cash, growing quickly, and increasingly diversified customer base. So where does Palantir sit? I guess, you know, putting things in context, super important. Are there other companies trading at 60 or 70 price to sales ratios right now in the market? I asked Chad CTPT and Gemini. Gemini wouldn't give me finance information? Come on, Google. Really?

Starting point is 00:13:42 A lot of the Googlers are listening to the show. And I've been, because we've been giving so much great praise to what they've been working on. But I couldn't get the Google finance and the Google finance team's behind. So where does Palantir sit versus other stocks when we look at a price to sales ratio? Yep. And by the way, this all goes back to startups. There is a time in which your valuation can get ahead of itself. And that happens in private markets.

Starting point is 00:14:10 You know, the people who are giving the investors. in those cases have downside protection. They're called protective provisions. So they get their money out first. So if the company does get sold, and let's say I put $10 million into your company at a billion dollar valuation for about 1% of it, and the company is making $10 million, so it's a hundred times revenue. It's a hundred times, you know, price to sales ratio.

Starting point is 00:14:36 Well, if the company was sold for $50 million or $10 million in a fire sale, my $10 million comes out first. That's what happens with private stock. That's why VCs will make, you know, crazy bets, like, or seemingly crazy bets on a stock that's high growth and to beat another venture firm. So if you're a venture firm, ACMI, and I'm venture firm Delta, and you offered $500 million valuation for that startup to put $10 million in for 2%. And then I come in and I'll say, I'll put $20 million in for 2%. So I'm going to pay twice the valuation. If we're both believe this is going to be a hundred billion dollar company. All I'm doing is losing the gain from a billion to two billion that you're insisting on getting, or

Starting point is 00:15:19 500 million. The difference between 500 and a billion. You're getting that first double. I'm saying, you know what, I'll give up that first double. I'll just play for everything after it. And that's why you see crazy valuations in private markets. In public markets, typically people like to make money and they don't have that downside protection. So they're like, well, let's make sure we reevaluate every day the stock market is trading. What makes sense here? And this obviously, I guess the correlation here is we are going to have a more efficient government under Trump 2.0. That's their promise to us, the American people, if we take them at their word. And I actually do at this point. We'll get into that in a minute, that they want to lower spending. They want to lower the debt

Starting point is 00:15:58 and they want to have a more efficient government. Well, where would you go to have a more efficient military? You go to Angel. You go to Palantir. You would go to SpaceX. These private companies have lowered the cost of getting to space or building missiles by 90%. So then, of course, you would go to them. So Palantir does have a bright future. Maybe that 30, 40% growth is going to go to 67% growth. Maybe it is the next Nvidia, and that's the bet people are making. So Jason makes a great point about other companies that might have a similar set of accounting

Starting point is 00:16:27 or perhaps a similar focus. I found a couple of names, Splank, Tableau, and Alterics are all companies that we think of when we consider big data and perhaps visualizations of it. Sadly, for us, Splunk was bought by Cisco for about $28 billion in March. Tablo got bought by Salesforce and Altrux was taken private by Clear Lake and Insight. So where does that leave us in trying to understand where Palantir sits? So we don't know for those three what the sales were at that time, or we have a guess? I don't recall the exact price sales ratio of those companies, but the point is they're off the table

Starting point is 00:17:00 and they're off the table far enough in the past that I think they wouldn't be joking comparable to Palantir today. but two companies that are Jason at least related. One is C3.AI, does AI for the enterprise, currently trading at a price sales ratio of 13, so about one-fifth of what we're seeing from Palantir, and that was as low as about 10x in recent quarters. And then the other one, when we think about big data, warehousing, leveraging that information,

Starting point is 00:17:26 Snowflake, a very well-run company. We've talked about them here on the show a lot. Well, their price sales ratio today is 16.2x, when as high as 24 in the last couple of quarters, Jason. But I couldn't find anything at scale in these areas that had a price sales ratio, revenue multiple, of anything even approaching Palantir. But people are willing to overpay for expectations. And so when you look at Trump media or whatever you call that company, TNTG,

Starting point is 00:17:56 yeah. People will pay for it. Yeah, people will pay for it. Okay. So a great company probably dipping into meme status. if when I talk about it, so many people are like, have fun, staying bored. When you see people pumping, pumping, pumping, that's when you know that you should be more cautious. I'm not going to say that's when you know there's like funny business going around.

Starting point is 00:18:18 But literally this weekend, there was a fake news story about Bezos spending $600 billion on his, 600 million, not billion, on his wedding. He's spending 600 billion. Everybody who comes is a billionaire. Right. You get a free billion dollars. your gooding bag and your name tag. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:18:36 So, no. And so Bezos had to come out and say, I'm not spending $600 million on my wedding. Do you know what the first reply I saw to his tweet was? What was it? Michael Seller. So go ahead and use it. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:18:49 Are you serious? Yeah, go ahead and do a search for it. I'm on. Look for Jeff Bezos and you'll find it. It is the funniest thing I've ever seen. All right. Take a second and picture the ultimate all-star team for your startup. Okay, you got that mental image?

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Starting point is 00:20:36 So Bezos comes out and says, furthermore, this whole thing is completely false. None of this has happened. In the old adage, don't believe everything you read is even more true today than it ever's been. Been throwing shade of the press on over Washington Post. Now lies can get all the way around the world before the truth can get its pants on. So be careful out there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Michael Saylor's reply, $600 million would buy a lot of people. Bitcoin. Here's the thing, though, Jason, that's not true. Because in Michael Saylor's estimation,

Starting point is 00:21:02 anything less than two or three billion dollars with the Bitcoin purchases, it's just chunk change. I mean, he's out there buying real Bitcoin, not that $600 million fake crap. That's like an interesting segue here. I'll just give you another tweet. As of this morning, December 23rd, Merry Christmas. Oh my gosh. Michael Saylor reports. Microchristage has acquired 5,262 BTC for $5161 million. Dang it. 600 million. He literally bought the 600 million last week.

Starting point is 00:21:31 I have never eaten my words so quickly in my life. But I do want to make a small point there about the press comment that you made, which is we are discussing the New York Post. Yes. Which, I believe, is part of the Murdoch Empire. You know, the New York Post isn't the one who reported it. I think they were reporting that it was fake. So, uh... Oh.

Starting point is 00:21:51 Yes. So, you know how the press is somebody, if one of the outlets gets something wrong, the other press. pile on about it. But of course, this led to crazy chaos online. But yeah, it's... $600 million for a wedding. I mean, that's like buying the castle, tearing it down, rebuilding the castle, tearing it down, rebuilding it, and then inviting everyone in England.

Starting point is 00:22:13 Like, I mean, that's a lot of money. Yeah, this is crazy. It's not true, obviously. But there was... I mean, it's not without precedent. Wasn't the precedent... Wasn't an error to an... Indian fortune. Didn't he just throw like a hundred million or $200 million wedding where he paid

Starting point is 00:22:31 you know, a bunch of major celebrities, just giant appearance fees? Ambani family. Kind of, I would say, the robber barons of modern India to use in a historical American analogy to a certain gilded era. And there's been some discussions about potential fraud in certain major family-run business empires in India. There you are. Just pointing that out. The thing, though, about Palantir, I do want to make sure we're giving the positive vibes here.

Starting point is 00:23:03 And I just go through their product lineup. And what they built is very impressive. And they're proud of themselves for doing well. The thing that hit me was this FT story from the last couple of days in which it discusses a new conglomeration of the companies you're discussing working together. So when you talk about SpaceX and Palantir and Andrew, we think of them as, as, as, you know, discrete units, but I think that they really want to operate more together. So the FTA reports that Palantir and Andrew and other companies are, quote, in talks with about a dozen competitors to put a consortium that will jointly bid for U.S. government

Starting point is 00:23:37 work in an effort to disrupt the country's oligop oligopoly of prime contractors. Awesome. Yes. That was exactly my first reaction. Great. Because even if there's a lot of self-dealing here amongst the Teal and PayPal Mafia, folks, it'll still be less corrupt and better than what we currently have. Well, I mean, it's a free market.

Starting point is 00:23:55 So, you know, if you look at what's happening right now, I think there's like a duopoly, basically, in these contracts. You get the same two or three people each time doing cost plus bidding. What this new group of defense tech companies are doing is not cost plus. They're just saying, here's what I can sell this to you. How many do you want? And so if they offer, as we had the submarine company on the unmanned submarine, company, you'll remember. My short-term memory's gone.

Starting point is 00:24:27 That company was, I think, they think they said they were making them for 50 to 100K, and they would normally cost 500 to 750. The Titan submersal, thank you. If you were to take the Titan submersible, you know, maybe the government's like, you know what, we're going to buy a thousand of these,

Starting point is 00:24:43 but since they're 90% cheaper, we'll take 2,000, and we'll have a new plan. So if you were going to defend against new enemies, new possibilities, if there's a vibrant competition going on here and startups are included in it and it's not fixed

Starting point is 00:25:00 and it's not based on who gave the most money or it's a new group of people who are exerting their influence through our system which includes money it's better for us because prices will go down and the value will go up of these products and no competition

Starting point is 00:25:14 if you look at the things that have gone up and cost in the United States the top things that have gone up and cost are healthcare, education, especially higher education, healthcare education and housing. And if you look at those three, there are the most regulated and government participatory

Starting point is 00:25:37 verticals that we have. And if you take some regulation out and there was like more college degrees were available from different folks or there was a more open healthcare system, insurance system, maybe we'd see a little bit. I wonder where military is in terms of the acceleration of cost. And if we are going to lower the budget, you could actually get more functionality and capability with startups making weapons, defense systems, et cetera, for less money.

Starting point is 00:26:04 So more for less? Who is not taking more for less? No, it's absolutely lovely. I do think that the cost plus accounting that we've seen is essentially just a license to be incompetent to run out timelines and to take in more money. It's literally saying, please, Bill Guss. So I'm glad that that is out of a favor. I will say, though, I don't want to compare Andrill and Vatin systems and everyone else too tight and submersible because that submersible was cheaper and failed. What I'm excited about is cheaper and better because I bet, I bet you, I bet you, Jason. I'm sure you actually agree with me here, but I bet these companies will make better products

Starting point is 00:26:39 for cheaper. So it's not just more and cheaper. No, no, these are going to be much better, much better. Yeah, better and cheaper. And so, you know, there's a number of examples of this. If you go take an Airbnb, you might have a better experience, if you like a kitchen and a backyard, when you rent a house, then getting a suite or three one bedrooms or three rooms at a typical hotel in the same city. So if that's the case, this is a similar situation where you're going to get a better product, produced differently. And I can tell you, entrepreneurs are all of a sudden asking themselves, I wonder if I could do something with drones.

Starting point is 00:27:16 That sounds kind of fun. That sounds kind of profitable as a business. That sounds kind of helpful to the world. So entrepreneurs are getting into Defense Tech. They're looking at all these areas. They're saying, how can I? And we had the founder of the self-driving company that does remote control of cars to drop off your rental car.

Starting point is 00:27:37 In Vegas, yeah. Yes. And so, you know, that company, a great founder, it will come to me in a second, is also working in Defense Tech. So you can imagine, you know, if you're in the field and you want a Humvee. Okay, how do I get a Humvee to you? You're a hundred miles away.

Starting point is 00:27:55 Well, I was going to say drive it, but I presume that's not the right answer. Now you've got to put four people into a Humvee to drive it to you. And then maybe they need to have another Humvee following them to get them back. Yeah. And then maybe you need a patchy to give them some air cover and throw up a drum. You want to send one Humvee into the field. You could send it alone. Just some guy with a joystick, gal with a joystick, boom.

Starting point is 00:28:15 zipping it right to the front line. Or maybe you need to put some stuff into it. Maybe you need some more ammunition. Boom, you send a Humvee remote control. It's going to be awesome. And so you do need to be vigilant. Anytime we have this kind of situation, I'm not saying like people shouldn't be vigilant

Starting point is 00:28:32 and question everything. But we are entering a new era clearly, and I thought we should talk about some more of my contemporaries, I'll say, people of my generation getting into politics, my friend Ken Howrie, who was previously an investor, a founder's fund, or co-founder, I think he's technically a co-founder, and was at PayPal. He's now going to be the ambassador to Denmark, and he was previously the ambassador to Sweden. So he's back in the mix.

Starting point is 00:29:03 He's a good friend of mine. Did you see the Trump post about this? We're going to put it up on the screen right now. We're going to pull it up. And this is all standard stuff here. But then he says, for the purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the US of A feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. Now, we can take that off the screen.

Starting point is 00:29:26 But usually ambassadorships, Jason, are just well-funded boondoggles. Like, Calista Gingrich just got the ambassadorship to Switzerland, which I presume it's going to be her. Pretty nice. Bounce around castles eating chocolates for a couple of years for free. I thought that they were sticking Ken in a relatively unimportant ambassador. until I saw the Greenland thing. So are these serious about this? Hey, everybody.

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Starting point is 00:31:09 you money. Disclamor, cards issued by Sutton Bank, members, FDIC, terms and conditions apply. I don't know that it would have to be for sale. I would like the Japan one. I know Rob Emmanuel's got it right now, but I found out. I asked, how does this whole work to some friends? And basically, you have to fund the ambassadorship. So people don't know this, but you as the individual who's going to be the ambassador to Sweden or France or Spain or whatever it is, you fund the operations of the embassy for those years. So it's going to cost you low millions of dollars to fund the parties, the staff, and all that kind of stuff. Yes.

Starting point is 00:31:46 That's not fun at all. Yes. So if you see people doing this, they have to raise money or they have to have money in order to do that. And it's a ceremonial position, obviously. And you represent our country, but obviously the decisions, and there can be moments, I guess, where you're in the mix. but I do think it's there's a large amount of ceremony with these ambassadorships

Starting point is 00:32:11 and they seem to be a lot of fun it seems like this is what rich people do for a four-year vacation and to serve their country I like it. I can see myself doing it someday. Oh, I would love to be an ambassador. I have a number of countries that I would love to spend time in

Starting point is 00:32:24 while wearing a fancy hat and a sash and going to dinners and such. I don't want to pay for it though. I think that's how it works. Well, you raise money. You get some better factors. It's like having a chair at a school You know, if you want to have like your own chair at Columbia or Harvard, you know, you get somebody to donate a $500,000 or a million dollars to pay for it, right?

Starting point is 00:32:43 All this stuff has got some underwriting. Yeah. Well, I didn't know that. But the Greenland point is interesting for two reasons, just to show everyone kind of where next year might be going. One, there is talk about somehow adding Greenland to the U.S. I'm in with Trump. Never sure if we're trolling. Never sure for being serious.

Starting point is 00:32:58 But Ken's caught up in that. And then also Trump wants to go and retake the Panama Canal is the latest thing. that I've seen. Well, yeah, there's some talk about the Panama Canal being co-opted by the Chinese or something. That seems like a national security issue. We sold it. So I don't know if we get to get it back. I will say, you know, when they're talking about deporting people and the sort of xenophobic part of the dialogue, which I don't like, which I don't think is actually going to happen. I think that's the rhetoric. I've now become convinced. I don't have inside information, obviously. But I think the Rhetoric is 15 million.

Starting point is 00:33:33 I think the reality. So we'll talk rhetoric and reality here. Rhetoric, 15 million people dragged out, thrown over the border, you know, chaos. Reality, 50,000, 250,000, violent criminals, people who, you know, steal, jump the turnstile, or light somebody on fire in a subway car. Like, that's what's going to happen. And there'll be zero tolerance for that, zero tolerance at the border. and then they're going to quietly kind of grandfather this concept of 15 million people being removed, which I think is great. I think Optin Empire Building is a great goal for our nation.

Starting point is 00:34:10 Just hear me out here. Okay. I'm here. I think our goal should be to get to a billion Americans and have America be the most populous and the most innovative country in the world. Now, how do you get to a billion from 350 million? You got a triple. Just about, yes. Yeah. So, and there's a certain amount of, you know, population growth through babies, but let's just say people aren't making a ton of babies. So there's two ways to accomplish this. You got to immigrate people or you got to do a little empire building. Opt-in, of course. I think we should start offering countries to join the United States. There would be some decade-long period of integration, getting off of their dollar, whatever, services, voting. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Canada.

Starting point is 00:34:56 I don't care who it is. I don't care if it's on the other side of the planet. I don't care if it's a Middle Eastern country, an African country. Why wouldn't we have a couple of outposts around the world? The French have some territories, you know, in the BVI, obviously the British Virgin Islands. There's a bunch of these kind of French Guiana. And French Guiana. I like the idea of America spreading democracy and building the largest populous country and the largest economy concurrently over the 21st century.

Starting point is 00:35:25 let's try to get to a billion Americans. What do you think of my proposal? Well, I won, agreed, and I was just trying to find a post that I wrote in which I cheekily said, this was some months ago, that we should, one, Puerto Rico should be a state clearly. But also, I was like, let's just take Canada, we'll take Mexico. Let's just make big, big, big, United States, many, many states. And I think it's a great, frantically idea. Other nations have their own views of sovereignty and so forth.

Starting point is 00:35:50 That's what I'm saying. It's opt-in, right? It's opt-in. Exactly. Exactly. Open door policy is great. I do not want us to go out there and grab other countries by the back of the neck and drag them in because that's going to lead to, I think, a lot of dissension in the ranks. But certainly. And what percentage of people, before you go to your end, would need to vote in favor of joining America for it to seem like you had enough consensus for that, dare I say, transaction to occur? 65. You think 65? Okay. I was going to say more like 75. I was thinking 75 or 80 percent. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:36:24 Like the overwhelming majority, a super majority. But you're thinking super majority too at 65. I was thinking the first number that came to my head was 75, 80. But it's maybe between 65 and 80. It becomes impossible at some point, right? Because if you have the bar set so high, you'll never clear it. And so to me, 60 is too low. 70 feels impossible.

Starting point is 00:36:43 That's kind of got to 65. But 65, 70%, yeah. I'm totally here for it. I have an idea. Okay. If it's in order to do the process, process, you have to have five consecutive years of voting 65% or more to join the United States or 70%. So it has to, you have to vote every year for five years for this to happen

Starting point is 00:37:06 and start the integration process. Then it's like, listen, the country voted not once, not twice, not three times, five times over five years to join the United States. You know, like there was a little, there's plenty of time to consider it. You didn't have one chance to vote. You had five, and you had to five years in a row have 70% or more. So you had to have real consensus and real discussions about it. Because if in year three, it dips to 60%, now that resets the clock. Now you've got to do five years in a row. And we should just go out there and like give our best offer.

Starting point is 00:37:39 Maybe there's countries in Europe that would want to be. Maybe Greece wants to be part of the United States. Wouldn't that be great for me if Greece was the 51st state? If they wanted to, why Greece? Because I'm Greek. Because we created, man, we created democracy. America perfected it. This would be full circle for me.

Starting point is 00:38:00 I'm so sorry. I did not know your heritage. So I'm like, struggling demographics. Famous debt loan. I'm like, dude, I'm not picking Greece. That's why I think it's an interesting concept. If you have a debt load, if you have challenges,

Starting point is 00:38:13 and another country wants to come in and say, hey, listen, I know you're having challenges. We could help smooth those out. And maybe you'd like to be part of our. culture. Yeah. And, you know, like, do you care if you have U.S.D as your currency or, you know, do you need to have your own currency? Do you want to be part of the EU or do you want to be part of the United States? Do you want to, you know, be able to come to the United States anytime back and forth would not worry about your visa? You know what that would do for Greece? And then if the

Starting point is 00:38:38 taxation was similar, retirement was similar, and you just take 20 years to have those systems blend together, I mean. Jason, can you imagine how funny it would be to explain? to people who are accustomed to European-style healthcare, how healthcare works in the U.S. Well, there you have it, right? And so maybe there's things the United States can learn. Like Canada has obviously figured some things out about health care. When I talk to Canadians, they complain incessantly about their health care. When I talk to Americans, they're like, why isn't our health care like Canada's? I'm moving to Canada to get their health care system. So they've obviously learned some things. And yeah, that would be amazing for Americans.

Starting point is 00:39:16 If Canada was the 51st state, if they opted into it, obviously. And American, Americans could move there and get in Canada as a, you know, state with, you know, multiple, it would obviously be multiple states over time. They would, Americans who went there would get the benefits of their health care system. And their health care system could be different than ours. And that would be an interesting, you know, concept. So maybe we need another level here because we have the United States, 50 states, and then we have the federal government.

Starting point is 00:39:46 But what you're describing almost sounds like underneath the federal system, different. collections of states with different rules, almost like having blocks. A territory. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be like the northeast, the southwest. You know, this would be the Canada states. So if they broke into five, six, seven states, whatever it is, it'd be the United States of Canada. Yeah, well, I mean, hell, yeah, I'm a big fan. The thing I was going to throw in there is that I don't think we have to go quite as far abroad to get more folks. I also think that we have lots of room inside the country. And anyone who's flown over the United States once has looked down and gone, wow, there's no one here.

Starting point is 00:40:21 And so there's lots of room just inside of the country. Pick a great location for energy and water and climate, given what's happening. What is the perfect place to build a new city and build a city intentionally for 30 million people? Now, it could start as 3 million, but with the intentionality of it hitting 30 million. In other words, a city of the scale of, you know, Beijing or Shanghai, a mega city, like really going for it. Where would you put the megacity? This will be like such an incredible thing for America to do to say, we're going to build a megacity.

Starting point is 00:40:56 And we're going to start with this plot of American-owned land because our government owns a lot of land. And we just say, hey, this million acres, this 100,000 acres, 500,000 acres is going to be the city center. And here's how we're going to have this Manhattan project, where we have startups and companies to pitch an architecture for the city. and then we're going to pitch neighborhoods and you as a company,

Starting point is 00:41:22 whether it was Google or Boeing, Google did have a city project, you remember, and they have Waymo. Google could come in. Apple could come in and say, I want to build, you know, this hipster neighborhood. This will be the Brooklyn or the Venice

Starting point is 00:41:34 or the Berkeley of it. I want to have that territory. I'm going to build Apple apartments, Apple whatever, and I want to have the concession to build a building of, you know, like the Apple headquarters. So Apple's headquarters could become, like, those rings, they could say we want to build 10 rings around the city.

Starting point is 00:41:53 And we're going to connect the 10 rings with Skyways, whatever, a hyperloop. And people will live in a ring, work in a ring, play in a ring, live in a ring. Steve Jobs considered that one of his great products, the mothership. Yeah. I remember watching that thing get built. I really like this idea, but I wonder if we have to use federal land because there's a lot of folks out there who own quite a bit of Government could buy from them. Yeah, government could buy from them.

Starting point is 00:42:18 Oh, sure, I guess you could do it that way. I love the idea. And I think we've seen some nations try this. If you look at Egypt's capital that they're building, kind of de novo. I just think it would be cool. It's at the UAE. UAE bought some land from them and they're going to build this new city there. And yet you have Neum, which is being built by Saudis.

Starting point is 00:42:36 Yeah. So, yeah, there are some precedents to doing some like this. But I love it. I love it. Okay, moving on. Other recent hires by the government, Scott Kapoor, now a, that he's going to be the director of office of personnel management, previously a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Starting point is 00:42:51 Employee number one, been there for about 15 years. I don't know Scott at all. Tell me about Scott. He's smart. I haven't worked with him, but he's got a great reputation smart. He's a team player. I don't know what this job does and what the mandate is there. So I went through their plans, and I went through their strategic plans for the OPM from 2020 to 2006. The thing that I struggle with is that they want to make the federal government a leading employer that is technology forward but also a great place to work.

Starting point is 00:43:24 And the struggle, Jason, is that I think a lot of the people who are glad that Scott's taking this job want the federal government to have far fewer people. So not exactly building out the same mission. So here we're going to see someone really come in orthogonal to where things have been heading and probably be a very unpopular person in terms of. The question is, what are the net benefits for the nation as we go through this? But that's going to be a tough gig. So the gig is, just looking at it here, human resources for federal employees, their benefits, their strategy to recruit, retain, and maintain the workforce. So basically, it's like being the chief operating officer, human resources department. This sounds like really great to have somebody who's a business person in this.

Starting point is 00:44:11 And if the goal is to shrink it and to get rid of the griff, there's a lot of people who are, let's face it, you know, in very high paid jobs and not working. I'm sure there's tons of people who are working more than they're getting paid for. But we all know it's growing too fast. We're in debt. We're spending too much money. Get in there. If you cut too deep, you can always add people back is the philosophy that I think we'll see. And I know it sounds cutthroat, but that is how you save money.

Starting point is 00:44:38 Let's squeeze her one more time here. Okay. Jason, this is the federal employment, right? Over what period of time? This is 1940 through today. Oh, is that percentage? Nope. Thousands of persons. So the federal government is not, now this doesn't include, I think, the military.

Starting point is 00:44:56 But it's not that many people. Which one is that? Because, you know, it has grown. Now, there's a state. It gets higher. Yeah, because you have state, you have military. There's a bunch of different data. points here that we need to look at. The federal, three million state, five point five. Local 14.5,

Starting point is 00:45:16 according to the daily caller. So I'm not sure if that's correct or not. But so anyway, we can debate how many people there should be in the government. I think maybe you and I agree there should be less. Oh, fewer. I just, I just think that people think that the federal government has 45 million employees who are all sitting around playing Tetris and their flip flops. And it's several million people. So if we're going to cut spend, I really do think that we're having, there's a goal and there's a method to reach that goal. And we talk about cutting spending and cutting staff as a way to get there. I just don't think that this number is going to add up to anything approaching impacting the actual spend and debt issue.

Starting point is 00:45:54 Oh, I got you. Yeah. So if we're going to do this, we've got to cut somewhere else. And it's going to hurt. Yeah. And it's good. Well, you know, it doesn't have to hurt because my guess is one third of the employees aren't contributing a bunch. And the top third, you know, are doing 80% of the work.

Starting point is 00:46:09 and then there's the middle third. So if you cut a third, I've seen this in every organization I've ever worked with, you cut the bottom 10, 20, 305%. You will see universally the company works more efficiently. And that's just the nature of any organization. That's totally fine, et cetera. I agree with that. That's how I would do it.

Starting point is 00:46:30 What I meant was we're going to have to make painful cuts on spending, like entitlement programs, not sort of thing. So the staffing, we can definitely cut 30%. I'm sure. I think you and I talked about this a while back. If it's 35% or it's 50% that you can cut, whatever. But that's going to be a very small percentage change in our overall spend. The military is the big number. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:50 Interstate and so forth. Yeah. There's a lot of places to cut. But, you know, I think a lot of it is also a philosophy. And the philosophy is going to be efficiency and competition and no more cronyism and grifting. I think that's what's going to happen is opening up, you know, that philosophy. And I'm here for it. And, you know, listen, if you don't believe they're going to do it, if you believe there's crony capitalism at work, it's going to be pretty obvious to see it. It's going to be right there on display. So you will see it. I can tell you, based on what I know, even the most cynical Democrats, the most cynical who hate Trump are going to have to nod and say, it's my prediction. We'll be sitting here a year from now. I think they did a good job on those issues. I give it to them for that. Whether it's, you know, making the military more competitive, cutting spending, reducing spending. And just as a philosophy, you're starting to see, and I'll just, as we look at these appointments, what we'll do with them in a moment, here's where I've come to.

Starting point is 00:47:49 People know I'm not a fan of Donald Trump, haven't been super critical. All the receipts are out there. You can see me saying all the things I believe about his past performance. My belief is he's the president now, and I'm seeing him surround himself with, quite literally, all of my friends and colleagues. My dream has always been that the government be as efficient as Silicon Valley as entrepreneurs and it should be more entrepreneurial

Starting point is 00:48:13 and more efficient. Guess what? I just got my dream. This has always been my dream is to see more people and for me, that version of it was I wanted Bloomberg to win. He got knocked out in the first debate, knockout punch, brutal, it is what it is. But I want to see

Starting point is 00:48:29 Jamie Diamond in there. I want to see more business people in there, less career politicians and really make the thing more efficient. So here's what my pitch is to everybody who doesn't like Trump. You have a year of action that you'll watch. You can be as critical as you want to be, bang on every assumption, everything they're doing, and just judge them in a year. Because you know what?

Starting point is 00:48:52 You have no choice but to do that. You can fight them as much as you want. You can tweet. You can scream. But they won. And they won with a bit of a mandate. And so here we go. let's see and Democrats, some Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, are on board with some of these

Starting point is 00:49:06 issues. So I think when they started voting on them, there's going to be a lot of Democrats who cross the aisle and say, and there'll also be some of Republicans who break rank, but they'll say, you know what, I agree. We should spend a little less here. So it's going to be entertaining. It's going to be a shade now. Absolutely. I'll take quite a lot of that. And I like the fact that we will be able to vet results based on the numbers. For example, we know how much money we were spending. We will know how much money that we do spend. We will see if, Yearly deficits decline. We will see if the federal employment numbers decline.

Starting point is 00:49:36 We will be able to actually kind of go out and see what they can do. So I don't think anyone was saying that everything we were doing was going well. So here's a new way forward. Okay. What I struggle with is the demand for whenever the Republicans win, everyone goes, we all have to get together now and all have to hold hands and work together. And when the Democrats win, the Republicans go, they want to bring Satan back and beat up for children. and I struggle a little bit to be as big of a person as you're asking me to be

Starting point is 00:50:04 when the other side that I'm being forced to hold hands with you're going to turn around and slap me the first chance they get when the tables are turned. Okay, though, I was raised Christian, turned the other cheek all right, but I got to say, people have tried this before. We have tried Blue Ribbon commissions, which is what Doge is, to cut spending. We have tried things. Let's see what we get. Now, other people that are coming in, Jason, include Suram-Christian,

Starting point is 00:50:28 former GP over at Andreessen. He's going to revise on AI policy. I've met him once, but it was back when I was a mess. He was embedded by Andresen Horowitz at Twitter when the takeover happened. So I spent a little bit of time with him there for the first couple of weeks. He is a hardcore, great human being, really solid individual, great communicator, hard worker. He's going to do great. And he's going to work with David Saxon.

Starting point is 00:50:53 He's going to be inside of the AI and crypto policy spot. And he was, if I recall, very active on the crypto side of investing for Andrewsson. Yes. So he'll be bringing, I think, a little more crypto to David Sachs' AI. Yeah, his group. Yeah, I guess there's a group being formed. And crypto needs to be regulated. And if we look at what happened the last four years, it was kind of Gary Gensler gave no path.

Starting point is 00:51:22 He didn't give the third path. It was either you can't do it or you can do it my way. or the way we've always done it. Exactly. Don't do it or do it the way it's always been done. There is, in fairness, to everybody in crypto,

Starting point is 00:51:37 they should have a rule set that has evolved and the SEC, Congress, whatever commissions they come up with, whoever winds up, you know, working on this, they need to light a fire

Starting point is 00:51:48 and make us, America, the most open to cryptocurrency geography in the world. It should not be the Zerg, it should not be some communist country or North Korea or, you know, Switzerland. It should be America. This is where we have the largest number of entrepreneurs pushing them to be in Puerto Rico, offshore, hiding their money.

Starting point is 00:52:12 I've told the stories before. I've been on the boards of companies that are, you know, adjacent to crypto or in crypto. And they're like, we're going to put this in literally, speaking of Panama, in Panama, in a nonprofit. It's going to cost a million dollars to set it up. And I'm like, what? What corporation cost a million dollars to set up? I can go on like any number of sites

Starting point is 00:52:30 and register a new company for $500 or free or $1,000. It makes no sense. So let's not drive it offshore. Let's regulate it. Let's tax it. And I believe we should build a Bitcoin reserve. You know how we should do it?

Starting point is 00:52:44 If you want to trade in Bitcoin in the United States, there is a 1% Bitcoin tax. You want to buy it. You want to sell it. Both sides pay 1% on every transaction. You know where it goes? Right into the government. That's it.

Starting point is 00:52:57 That's very interesting. I mean, if I told you Bitcoin was totally legal, was totally sanctioned in the United States, and you could go crazy with it, have fun with it. And we came up with maybe a capital gains treatment for it that was different or unique in some way. And then we said, hey, we're going to go down and we're going to help XRP and Doge and whatever else is out there, Solana. We're going to help them have a very clear regulatory environment. but every time you trade in and out of crypto, both sides pay 1%. And it goes to the government wallet.

Starting point is 00:53:29 I want to ask a question about this because I have been lightly sympathetic to the idea that crypto does not match one to one to existing securities law. And we might need a couple of tweaks to make it work a little bit better for crypto. It sounds, though, when you say third way and a different approach that you're anticipating something a little bit more broad, Jason. So I'd like you on the spot. But I'm kind of curious, like, why does crypto need a separate and more lenient set of rules compared to traditional securities like you and I are know in love? Great question. You cannot take your Netflix shares and use them to fund a rendering cluster of computers and then burn those, you know, as a utility token, etc. So those shares just exist as a piece of paper in a ledger somewhere that you own a share of a company.

Starting point is 00:54:25 They don't have any utility in the real world. An NFT is a collectible. It's obviously the NFTs. People are buying them when they buy a Beeple NFT. It's a one of one. It's a piece of art. He is a known artist. That doesn't fit in there either.

Starting point is 00:54:39 So then when you have a Dow and everybody's voting on what to do with their crypto and which NFTs to buy and then what rights the NFTs have, can they come to this party or that party, that's more like a membership, but it trades like a currency. These are called innovations. Those innovations should be allowed. But we should allow them while making sure that people don't steal the money and grift. And if it's permissionless and there's a network of computers that nobody owns the network,

Starting point is 00:55:06 but each individual's own nodes, well, then that has to be accounted for as well. Because who's responsible when somebody loses their money who's a retiree in Florida? Well, here's very simple regulation. But each of these projects has to have an overseeing committee. That overseeing committee gets paid compensation in order to make sure there's insurance for the project, that there is KYC, that it's not, that people are looking to make sure

Starting point is 00:55:31 it's not being used for money laundering or terrorists or human trafficking or whatever terrible thing that could be done with these cryptocurrencies. That's people have reported is being, that Heather is being used for. There's many reports. It is the currency of choice for. You know, the criminal underground, which, by the way, $100 bills were also part of that. Gold, Julian and diamonds are part of that. It just sounds to be how there is a quicker way than handing somebody an ounce of gold for whatever you're trafficking.

Starting point is 00:56:00 So I think those are all examples of things that, you know, the current system doesn't take into account. And it's very simple. Accreditation. Start with a sophistication test. I have been shouting this on every all-in episode, every this week and start-up episodes for, well, 14 years, ever since I got exposed to this because I know that people want to, in my family, in my friend circles, you know, or employees of mine want to participate in something like the syndicate.com where we share deals. 90% of deals will probably go to zero in any of those

Starting point is 00:56:34 platforms. And so I expect ours will be similar. And I wrote a book about this. And there's a book called the power law. People love to get educated about this stuff. But I can't offer for, I'm I don't know, a million Americans to put in $100 each into a startup, like, let's say, Cafe Axe, which we did some syndicates for the top 5%, but maybe the public wants to buy shares of Uber or Robin Hood when I had access to them. And I could have said, you know what, I'm going to do something where I offer to drivers the ability for them to put in $100 to $1,000, they're not allowed to. But they know Uber and DoorDash and Lyft and sidecar before it better than anybody because

Starting point is 00:57:12 they're doing it all day long. but they're not allowed to participate. So just start with the accreditation laws, is my message to Washington, and then let people participate in receivings as a percentage of their income or net worth. Those two things would solve the whole problem. You want to buy XRP,

Starting point is 00:57:30 and half the people think it's a scam, half the people think it's the greatest things since sliced bread. Great. You can spend up to 10% of your net worth on cryptocurrencies in this experimental category. I find it very interesting that your example about Netflix maps so neatly to Bitcoin. Yeah. Own a bit of Netflix.

Starting point is 00:57:51 It sits in a ledger somewhere that you own it and you can't use it in a Dow. It's not a utility token. It's not going to get burned. That's holding ETH or holding Bitcoin, which would make them, by my logic, securities. And this is when I really begin to struggle. I do think that there's something to your point about how we have Dow's and other things that don't quite map to securities. And if you buy a token that is designed to be a lever on a system instead of a corporation or as a group, sure. But like, I struggle.

Starting point is 00:58:21 What if a musician? Yeah. That you, what's your favorite heavy metal band? Fit for an autopsy. Fit for an autopsy says, we are putting out a new double record. Hell yes. And it's going to cost us, are they a major signed label band or are they? They're on nuclear blast records, Jason.

Starting point is 00:58:39 So maybe they spend a quarter million dollars to make. make an album? Sure. I'm putting a number out there. Somewhere between that and 500, yes. Okay, so let's say 500,000 is what it costs to make a really high quality record. They say, hey, you know, our label dropped us, but we're going to offer our fans, $500,000.

Starting point is 00:58:57 And you each get to own for, you know, every $5,000 is 1% of that record for all eternity. And you get your name on the back cover. Yeah, okay. They can't do that right now. They can't do that. They're not allowed to. They can do it for 5% of the country at an expensive cost. But what have you said?

Starting point is 00:59:15 You know what? For me, it's about supporting the band. I want to own 20 basis points, $1,000. For me, being able to go to the concert to get a signed album, so every $1,000 gets a signed album. So they have to sign 500 albums. Would you spend a thousand dollars to get a signed album, go to the concert, and have your name in the record label notes as one of the producers? Oh yeah, I would do that for no recognition. If the band was like, we're broke, send us money, I would send them money.

Starting point is 00:59:47 So, okay, they do that for their album, and they get to own their masters for all time, and the community gets to own half of their masters alongside them. So half of the equity goes to them, half goes to the community. You can't do that right now. Why can't you do that? Because we have antiquated security laws that want to protect you, Alex, and the other fans from spending your money. You're not allowed to do it because in the eyes of the SEC, you're not sophisticated enough, which is another way of saying you're dumb. Well, just as a reminder to everyone, what Jason's talking about in the accreditation test?

Starting point is 01:00:22 According to sEC.gov, currently the financial criteria is net worth over a million, excluding your house, or if you and your spouse make $300K or more per year in each of the last two years. So you're accredited probably, but anyway, putting it all aside. Yes. Putting it all aside, you 10 years ago weren't accredited. Oh, God, no. I was anti-accredited. And that's when, so back then, you were writing for tech crunch. You were brilliant.

Starting point is 01:00:44 I met you in your first couple of years in the business. You were too stupid in the minds of the government, unsophisticated, to do that. No, you were sophisticated enough to go take your $1,000 and play poker and lose it to your friends or give it to, you know, whoever, you go to Vegas and put it on a roulette wheel. Sure. So that's what I'm talking about. And that's the kind of thing. You could then sell it. Let's say that album becomes one of the best selling albums of all time.

Starting point is 01:01:08 and your equity and it's worth 3x and your kids go to college and your 5,000 turned it to 15 and you want it for college, you could sell it to somebody else in the Dow instantly without any going public or anything just in a wallet. So the way I would say it is projects under $100 million in total market cap should be able to do whatever the hell they please

Starting point is 01:01:28 as long as they're registered in some way with this is the people who have started the project and we have some basic insurance that cost $1,000 or something. So I love all of that, Jason. Like you're speaking my language. I would love to have more ways to work with fans of other artists that I love, especially bands that are struggling in the Spotify era. But here's the thing.

Starting point is 01:01:49 All we need to do that is to just update the securities laws to be a little bit less stupid. None of that requires a special set of rules for crypto that's distinct. So to me, I don't think we need a third way. I think we need a more intelligent main path. Sure. And I just think that it's not a sin that many assets. in the crypto world are securities. And so what we should do is we should just make the securities aperture a little bit wider,

Starting point is 01:02:13 which I think is what you are. I think we're getting to the same place here. Yeah, I'm saying a third way because I think there's so much innovation here that you really need to start from a blank sheet of paper and really understand, you know, is this a situation where you do need to know your customer or not? Right. Is this a situation where it has to be registered? If it's like NFTs, you know, and they're trading under a certain dollar amount and they're trading cards, like, I don't know that you need to be so worried about K.YC, etc. That's why I think you could like let people start small projects as the projects get bigger. If there's a central authority, they have to register, etc. But anyway, you're correct that a lot of what I'm saying could also be viewed as evolving the securities law. And when I say a test, I mean a test similar to a driver's license, and easily accessible.

Starting point is 01:03:04 test, not something you pay where you go to school for for a year or two. I'm talking about you spend six hours in a course on your own time. That's a free course online. And then you take a 50 or 150 question test and you're licensed. In other words, you can't go back to the people who sold you a, you know, a JPEG and say, oh, this JPEG isn't worth the $50,000 I spent on or the $5,000 or the 500 because you took a test. That said, there's no inherent value to that. this because it's a piece of art and it's the only way for this to have value is for somebody else to believe it has value and there may not be a buyer for your piece of art ever again because you pick the wrong piece.

Starting point is 01:03:46 Yes. Well, that's why I buy all art on the predication of I love it. If it goes up in value, huzzah. Look, we have a couple more names though. Emil Michael, one of Uber executive, named Undersecretary for Research and Engineering. Fantastic. Congrats to you, Emil. I don't know him at all.

Starting point is 01:04:03 I know you do. And so tell me why he's the right guy. I mean, he was Travis's right hand man. He will get any deal done. He is just if you wanted to have a dealmaker by your side, he'd be top three in the industry to grab. If you wanted an operator, you know, dealmaker, aggressive. You know, this is like getting a version of Travis on your team for the government. And so whether you like business people are not, sharp elbow people are not, aggressive people

Starting point is 01:04:33 are not. In our government, we've had the opposite. I am here to have aggressive, hardcore, driven people who want to perform at a high level in the government. I predict all these nervous Nellys, all these people who are negative about this right now, you know, who are like, oh my God, we're just, this is oligarchs, we're turning into oligarchy. I think these people actually are doing it in a patriotic way. And I think we're going back to a founding father type situation where the most successful people in the private sector go do a tour of duty, give up making money for four years, eight years, whatever it is, and then they come back into the private sector. Or in some cases, they're able to do both in some of these positions, but some

Starting point is 01:05:18 you can't. And we don't know in each of these positions, which ones are, you have to divest everything. You can't. We're going to find out. I can't wait to read the financial disclosures. I wonder who's poorer than we think. Well, I mean, and then the other thing is, you know, they're going to, in some cases, have to divest. And if you're worried that people are going to be, you know, people are going to be grifting or talking their own book or working their own book, this is something that exists already. All these generals, all these people working in defense do like whatever number of years at Raytheon. Then they go work in government. They go back to Raytheon. It's a revolving door. It's well-known. It's a problem. And it's a problem. Here you have high-profile people who've already made their

Starting point is 01:06:02 money, we're playing for legacy. I would judge them based on that. And just you'll know if there's any type of corruption or grift, it is going to come out so fast because AOC, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and that group are so tuned in to making sure it doesn't happen. There are checks and balances in our system. That's my belief. I could be wrong. This could be one of those clips that gets played and people go, look, you were wrong. But I am an optimist. I think that this is the default case. I think everybody's going to be quite pleased with the performance of these individuals. Okay. Well, that brings us to one last name, just adding one more to the mix, because Jason's giving

Starting point is 01:06:38 them all lots of points. So one more for the scoreboard. Michael Cratsios, someone that actually, that's new to me, is going to help with Saks on Emerging Technologies. Currently an MD at Scale AI, a company that we all know. But this was one of the tech people that I didn't already follow one. Yeah, I don't have a relationship with them. Can't speak to it.

Starting point is 01:06:57 But again, I think what we're going to see is, a really young, high energy, tech first, entrepreneurship first, less regulation, lower taxes, less spending, more efficient and competitive America. That's my guess. And I think people are going to learn to appreciate what this group can do. And back to people with Trump derangement syndrome or who don't like Trump or who have, you know, concerns about his leadership and his track record. in this Trump two-point era, my major concern was that people who I consider incompetent, racist, xenophobic, deranged, dumb, the whack pack. Remember some of the whack pack he had around him the last time around, like really bad actors, people with nefarious intent, people who were really dark individuals in my estimation. Now you've got people who are rabid capitalists.

Starting point is 01:07:55 this is the ultimate upgrade. This is the ultimate upgrade. Steve Bannon versus Emil Michael or David Sacks, like massive upgrade. So thank your lucky stars is the way I'm looking at this. If this was Trump 1.0 and it was a bunch of Steve Bannons, then I would be super concerned. This is a much better turnout.

Starting point is 01:08:14 So that's another way for people who have concerns to maybe think relative to who Trump could hang out with. Maybe this is better. No, I definitely, I'll take someone who's run a business service Steve Bannon because I would take the gum stuff to the bottom of my shoe before Steve Bannon. So low bar there. But I do appreciate the optimistic take here. I'm trying to be optimistic.

Starting point is 01:08:38 I'm trying to be optimistic. Yeah, yeah. You know, these in some cases are many of my close friends, so I am as biased as that comes. I am the most biased. I understand that. But this is one of the times in which I think bias is useful. Yeah. Because you're speaking from not just people.

Starting point is 01:08:53 that you've met a handful of times, like a great many people that journalists meet, you know, three, four, five times total. These are people that you know very deeply. And so that gives you, I think, a better view into what they'll do when people aren't looking, which I think is basically what character is. I can tell you, David Sachs made enough money.

Starting point is 01:09:09 Yelan's made enough money. Emil Michael's made enough money. I know that they don't need, they're not doing this for money. I've had conversations with many of these people about why they're doing it. I won't say which ones. They're doing it because they actually think America needs them.

Starting point is 01:09:22 So whether you think that's deranged, delusional, delusions of grandeur, put it all aside. They feel called to serve. They feel called to put, you know, whatever number of years of entrepreneurship and increasing their net worth during one of the great eras in technology, the AI era, they think it's more important to save America in their minds. They literally think they're saving America. Now, people will laugh at it. People will criticize it. But I tell you, that's truly what they think. They want to, they think that national debt's an existentialism.

Starting point is 01:09:52 and they want to help and they want to make the government more efficient. I say give them 12 months and write a score. Yeah. Well, the only thing I'll say is I do hope that people remember that, and I just pull up the latest numbers, that Trump won 49.9% of the vote. Yes. Now, that is 1.5% more than Kamala did, shut out. But I'll just say. What was it?

Starting point is 01:10:14 3 million Americans more? Let's see. It's 2.3 million more. Okay. So it's not not let day one. Shout out. Yes. But I do hope that there's also a recognition that not everyone has the exact same vision.

Starting point is 01:10:31 And so I hope, oh, no. Other people also have a chance to have a voice. Literally the reason I'm saying this is because I know that there are a bunch of people who are very concerned. And I have told them and I said it on an episode of All In. I think it's important for Republicans who have a very high troll level, a very high vengeance level. you know, explicitly stated for them to say, you know what, let's do this for all Americans. And I told them on the other side, again, Captain Nuance here, I am a moderate, just like I'm telling the people on the left, hey, give them a chance, judge them based on the results.

Starting point is 01:11:06 I told them publicly on the All-InPod, on my Twitter, and I've told them privately, do not troll people and make sure the benefits of Doge, make sure the benefits of Doge, make sure the benefits of efficiency are felt by the bottom half first. And my pitch to them was all the gains that we see, if we can get back in the black as opposed to going into debt, let's say we're back in the black by whatever amount and we can reduce taxes. They should just come out and say, you know what?

Starting point is 01:11:37 All tax reductions for the next four years are going to the bottom 75% of the country, the top 25% are not going to get any tax breaks. That would be the high ground. And I would love to see a tax package that was actually progressive in that way. History is not kind of kind of expectation, but there's always a new chapter to be written. So again, leaning on your optimism here, I'll take it. Because here's the thing, Jason, we're in the car.

Starting point is 01:12:05 We're going over the cliff. Geronimo. So it isn't like we're like opting in or out here. You and I are side by side here and someone else is driving. I mean, my perception of you now working with your, you know, a couple times a week here is, you're a moderate techno optimist who is liberal socially. Am I correct? Capitalism, technology, and gay rights.

Starting point is 01:12:28 Okay. Awesome. And so you put that package together. I think we're in a good place right now. I think you're going to be pleased with how this goes. Well, I mean, look, I love a good surprise. But before we go, I have a couple of really funny comments from the audience that I do want to bring up. Yeah. So a while back, Toronto filmmaker, Irvon X, said, right now,

Starting point is 01:12:47 13% of Canadians are in favor of joining the U.S. according to a recent poll. So we have some work to do to get Canada on our side. It's currently upside down, but I like that. And LMNOP, that's a great name. LMNOP says Greenland would be great for natural cooling of data centers. To which I say to you, LNOP, yes, but have you heard about climate change? So that will have a multi-hundred-year ceiling to it.

Starting point is 01:13:15 Interesting you bring that coming up. There have been data centers that were put in cold locations with, you know, good natural energy sources. And somebody told me the way they designed them is to put fans in them and to have the wind and where they place them be where cold air will blow into it. So during certain months, they actually literally can open the doors as it is on either side of the data center and have the freezing air below through the H-100s and cool them down. Now, I don't know if that's reality, but that was explained to me by a data center expert that that existed as a concept. Did you see that Microsoft thing from like, I want to say five years ago when they wanted to put a data center in like a shipping container underwater? Yes. And that was so cool.

Starting point is 01:14:00 And that was before the AI boom. So I want to know. Actually, okay, here's a question. If you are building something to our friends in the audience, that involves really, really insane data center cooling, Alexw or launch.com, shoot me an email. I want to talk to you because this is an issue that I just love. Jason, we have one more show before the end of the year, and it's the twisty, so it's going to be a little more retrospective. So let's just, let's end here.

Starting point is 01:14:24 And on a positive note of just saying that let's hope everything goes better than we expect and make everybody benefit to the int's degree, and may this be the new onset of an American century, and may my concern be wrong. Yeah, golden age. Let's do a golden age. Stay positive, folks, because you have no choice. We're in the car.

Starting point is 01:14:44 You're in the car. With Bumble and Louise heading towards the cliff, folks. We'll see you all on Monday with the Twisty Awards. Sign up for the channels. And my pitch to you is in 2025. I want you to start a company. Be independent. Start a company.

Starting point is 01:15:02 You know, like Alex did, he works here with me, but he also has cautiously optimistic. Cautious optimism. Cautious optimism. We have to put that in your lower third. Can we get lower thirds here now that we're using restream? cautious optimism, then I won't mess it up. Cautionism.substack.com, I believe is the newsletter, give him the hundred bucks.

Starting point is 01:15:20 Yeah, help him out here. Let's build a foundation. He's being entrepreneurial. He's here half the time. He's doing his newsletter half the time. And founder. Dot University, which I'm going to be bringing, and I'll be announcing next year,

Starting point is 01:15:31 the founder university is going to be coming to another region in the world. You teased this on the last AI with Sunny. If you want to go get a little more, there you go. Go back in the archive. Founder. Dot University coming to another region in the new year.

Starting point is 01:15:48 Talk to soon. Bye-bye.

This Week in Startups - Palantir’s Valuation, VC’s Go To Washington and Much More | E2065

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