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Podcast

Red-Pilled Billionaires, LA Fire Update, Newsom's Price Caps, TikTok Ban, Jobless MBAs

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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  • Reconciling Political Differences
    • Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman reconciled political differences after Pincus publicly supported Trump.
    • They affirmed their friendship and engaged in a long conversation to understand each other’s principles. Transcript: David Friedberg You still close with Reed, Mark? Yeah, very close. How did you guys reconcile your differences in political views in this last election? Because he was very vocal, Kamala, you obviously became vocal, Trump, and very kind of diametrically different views on the future. Speaker 1 Kind of journey into bigger national politics together. We both sat down and had lunch with Biden and wrote big checks a little over a year ago, December of 23. And then, you know, it won’t bother you, but I had my red pill moment and I went a very different direction, which started off just questioning the Democrats. Chamath Palihapitiya Hold on, hold on. Can you actually just double click into that? What was your red pill moment? Was there one specific thing or was it more of a trickle of things? Speaker 1 It was both, right? It’s like it starts, the wall starts crumbling and then it comes down all at once. So for me, it really started early in 23. I started reading Pirate Wires and Mike Solana. And I thought he was a little crazy at first because he would write these articles. One he wrote was about how the Ukrainian soldiers had swastikas on their helmets and the New York Times photographers would ask them to take the swastikas off for photos. And I said, that can’t be right. That can’t be true. And then four months later, it was in the New York Times, buried in the middle of the paper. And I kept seeing stories like that, that he would be early on. And so I just started feeling uncomfortable and queasy about what was going on with mainstream media. And then in May of last year of 24, I read some article that talked about Trump’s speech in Charlottesville. And this has been well covered, but but where he said there was good people on both sides. And the article said it was completely, you know, propaganda and not what he actually not accurately reflecting what he said that that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in his speech. And so then I went and watched that video. And that was my red pill moment. I think it was for a lot of people. Because it wasn’t just the media spinning it or politicians spinning it. That was one of the pillars of why you were supposed to hate Trump was that speech. And, and then you see Biden say, that’s why he had to run a second time. And you see Obama go to even see Biden bring it up again, the beginning of the DNC. And it’s one of their pillars. And they clearly know that they’re misrepresenting things. So for me, that was just, that was beyond uncomfortable. I was just like, okay, now I got to go back to first principles and look at the primary data and listen only to original speeches by people. And I just realized I couldn’t trust mainstream media. So I became, I started questioning the Democrats. As soon as I started questioning the Democrats, I started getting a lot of shame and anger and hatred. Oh, the other thing that happened that was part of this journey is that my chief of staff parted ways with me after nine years in April of last year. And he was the main person protecting me from myself on Twitter. And he was the one who would say, stay in your lane. Nobody wants to hear what you think about politics or San Francisco, or anything other than, you know, your area of products and investing. And with him gone, I just started tweeting whatever I felt and thought. And sometimes I got it wrong, or it was a little too emotional. But first of all, it was really fun. And then second of all, I found, I got connected to this whole new audience of people who are these kind of techno optimists. I think you guys probably talked about it. And that just brought me down this path that eventually I came out two days before the election publicly for Trump. And it was only because that’s when I completely got there. And I was trying to just be completely honest and authentic with myself and on Twitter at the same time. And my daughters turned to me that Sunday and they said, you’re going to vote for Trump. We know it. And I said, yeah, you’re probably right. And they said, well, then you have to go say it on Twitter. And my daughters were like, really in this with me. Yeah. So anyway, and then it was on the front page of the New York Post on the day of the election that I was this, not that I’m such news, but maybe it was just was their news peg that I was coming Out for Trump. And, but I’ll get back to your read question. But what I love about my New York Times, about my New York friends is that they did not give a f***. They were all pro Kamala and they texted me and they’re just like, oh, that’s kind of funny. But it’s one thing I kind of love about New York. They didn’t care. Back to your question on Reed. What I love about Reed was he was already getting pings from people saying, what’s going on with Pincus? He’s going off the rails. He’s becoming a Trumper. You know, you guys, I’m sure, have gone down this road. I got a little bit of that too about Shemaz and Vreemburg. David O. Sacks Yeah. Speaker 1 Me. So you’re like, wrong with him? We got to bring him back into the fold. You know, he’s, he’s, should we lock him up? Is he crazy? And so Reed was already getting these. I had a lot of anxiety about talking to Reed about it. And finally, Reed and I got on FaceTime. And he just said, I just want to start by saying i’m team mark and i said i’m team reed and it gets out a little you know but well no americans can get along even if they disagree politically About a candidate’s (Time 0:06:02)
  • Red Pill Moment
    • Mark Pincus’s “red pill” moment involved questioning mainstream media narratives.
    • He began distrusting the media after noticing discrepancies between their reporting and primary sources. Transcript: Speaker 1 Was both, right? It’s like it starts, the wall starts crumbling and then it comes down all at once. So for me, it really started early in 23. I started reading Pirate Wires and Mike Solana. And I thought he was a little crazy at first because he would write these articles. One he wrote was about how the Ukrainian soldiers had swastikas on their helmets and the New York Times photographers would ask them to take the swastikas off for photos. And I said, that can’t be right. That can’t be true. And then four months later, it was in the New York Times, buried in the middle of the paper. And I kept seeing stories like that, that he would be early on. And so I just started feeling uncomfortable and queasy about what was going on with mainstream media. And then in May of last year of 24, I read some article that talked about Trump’s speech in Charlottesville. And this has been well covered, but but where he said there was good people on both sides. And the article said it was completely, you know, propaganda and not what he actually not accurately reflecting what he said that that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in his speech. And so then I went and watched that video. And that was my red pill moment. I think it was for a lot of people. Because it wasn’t just the media spinning it or politicians spinning it. That was one of the pillars of why you were supposed to hate Trump was that speech. And, and then you see Biden say, that’s why he had to run a second time. And you see Obama go to even see Biden bring it up again, the beginning of the DNC. And it’s one of their pillars. And they clearly know that they’re misrepresenting things. So for me, that was just, that was beyond uncomfortable. I was just like, okay, now I got to go back to first principles and look at the primary data and listen only to original speeches by people. And I just realized I couldn’t trust mainstream media. So I became, I started questioning the Democrats. As soon as I started questioning the Democrats, I started getting a lot of shame and anger and hatred. Oh, the other thing that happened that was part of this journey is that my chief of staff parted ways with me after nine years in April of last year. And he was the main person protecting me from myself on Twitter. And he was the one who would say, stay in your lane. Nobody wants to hear what you think about politics or San Francisco, or anything other than, you know, your area of products and investing. And with him gone, I just started tweeting whatever I felt and thought. And sometimes I got it wrong, or it was a little too emotional. But first of all, it was really fun. And then second of all, I found, I got connected to this whole new audience of people who are these kind of techno optimists. I think you guys probably talked about it. And that just brought me down this path that eventually I came out two days before the election publicly for (Time 0:06:58)
  • Authenticity vs. Blockers
    • Chamath Palihapitiya criticizes the “blocker” role often played by chiefs of staff.
    • He argues they filter a person’s true self and hinder authentic communication. Transcript: Chamath Palihapitiya You said something almost in passing, but I just want to double click. I think part of what Silicon Valley actually gets wrong is that we don’t embrace the tism. And what I mean by that is everybody, we’re all a little socially uncomfortable, we’re awkward. I wouldn’t say that we were the coolest people growing up. And there’s this virulent form of blockers. You called it chief of staff. I think that these folks can be very detrimental, which almost represent this filter between your true self and everybody else. And there is this game that’s played about being a gatekeeper. I do think that executive assistants are valuable. Administrative assistants are valuable. The reason I can say this is that my EA went on maternity leave. I had, and I experimented with the chief of staff, et cetera. And now I use Jason’s service called Athena. And I have a guy that works with me in the Philippines. And it’s about 3,000 a month. And I can honestly tell you, this guy is the single most effective administrative support I’ve ever had. And what there isn’t is all these opinions on what I can say or do. And I think that when you look at a lot of these big companies, if you look at Zuck’s current transformation or what you just spoke about, there are all these interlopers that seem to get In the middle of you and people’s perception of you. I don’t know if you have any comments or reactions to that idea. (Time 0:12:35)
  • Lunch with Biden
    • Mark Pincus recounts a lunch with Joe Biden where Biden maintained conversation throughout.
    • Pincus observed Biden wasn’t mentally debilitated but seemed managed by his staff. Transcript: David O. Sacks Culture is going to kind of move more towards base. Back to the other question with Biden, that lunch you had, did he seem like he was all there come on yeah come on mark was it in the afternoon i mean did you have concerns about that because That was sharp as a tack well that was the thing that broke me i mean i’m not saying i’m like full mag over here but that was like wait a second are you guys lying about this like how long is Speaker 1 This and how deep is this cover-up i have no horse in this race i didn’t have a horse in the race so i had nothing to lie about. I for sure don’t now. I’m really not a Biden fan or protector. I’ll tell you, like, the exact, my exact observation. We, we had this launch, there was like, maybe five of us with Biden and a few of his finance people in, they had it in the tennis house, which is the way they found that they can have a fundraising Lunch on the property of the White House. They found some way. We’ll see if Trump does it. Some loophole, right. Yeah, the loophole. And it was, I was impressed. It was a long lunch. It must have been an hour and a half, two hours. And I’ll tell you the good and the bad. The good, the part I was impressed was he kept the conversation thread. He was engaged and kept the thread the whole time. When people, when you say sharp as a tack or kept the thread, that’s how we talk about like our 90-year grandparent or something. So I’m just saying the reality to me, he, he was not, he did not seem mentally debilitated in the sense of dementia, but we were impressed that he was able to follow the conversation thread And then say, you know, okay, let me say differently. Chamath Palihapitiya Would you have had the same bar if it was Jamie Diamond sitting across from you for a two hour lunch? No, no. Speaker 1 So, so, so, yes, it was, it was, wow, your grandfather is holding up really well. Like your grandfather was able to have a whole lunch and hold the conversation. But it wasn’t, I didn’t walk away saying, I have to admit, I did not walk away saying, I think he’s mentally unfit, but I did. But, and I wasn’t shocked, but I was like, okay, this is someone who’s being really handled and managed by the people around (Time 0:17:00)
  • Free Market for Rebuilding
    • David Friedberg criticizes California’s price controls and non-solicitation rules post-wildfires.
    • He argues that these hinder market recovery by disincentivizing builders and reducing market liquidity. Transcript: David O. Sacks And I think went a bit viral is your sort of talk about putting your thumb on the scale with insurance. I mean, this is, I think, one of the concerning things here is the free market not being allowed to progress previously with insurance and then now with the rebuild. David Friedberg Well, California has got, at this point, price controls or a mechanism for controlling the change in price on insurance, on housing services, and now they’ve got this non-solicitation Rule. All three, I think, are very challenging to, I think, an appropriate market recovery. Look, the insurance issue is a longer one. If you guys want, we could talk about that. I’ve got a couple of notes I can bring up on the history of how we got to this point. But I think it’s going to be one of the biggest burdens going forward, and it could actually lead to a pretty significant effect in long-term housing prices in California because of The way that the insurance market is structured and regulated in California. But if you want, we can talk about that. David O. Sacks Or up or down. What do you think ultimately, you know, TLDR, like, do you think prices are going to go way up here? Do you think this is going to take five or 10 years to rebuild these homes? I mean, we’ve never seen this many structures go down at this price point in a constrained area where just construction is so expensive and hard. David Friedberg So I think the governor did a good job suspending the permitting requirements for the Coastal Act for affected and the CEQA review. Those are very important, I think, suspensions. But he also put in place this executive order for price gouging. And if you pull up the note, Nick, so he basically said California Penal Code Section 396, which prohibits price gouging during a declared state of emergency, will now extend indefinitely In this region. And in the language in that penal code, it says that businesses cannot raise the price of essential goods and services by more than 10% above their pre-emergency price for a specified Period. And in this case, his executive order is indefinitely. So on an indefinite basis, you cannot raise the price of goods and services, which generally applies to consumer goods like food and emergency supplies, but it also applies to building Materials and services related to housing work. So if you want to attract builders, if you want to attract contractors, if you want to attract electricians and plumbers to go to the LA area, you have to allow the market to do its job. If I’m a plumber operating in Sacramento or in Phoenix, and I’m like, man, I could make some money if I go to LA, you will see an influx of service providers and an influx of goods to support The rebuilding effort in Southern California. That’s the way the free market should work, is there’s an opportunity in the market, folks show up, they say, great, I can make money, I’m going to come here and do this work. And as more folks show up, they begin to compete on price, and eventually the cost kind of normalizes, and you end up finding what is now the new fair market value between the bid and the Ask, the people that are saying, hey, I’ll do the work, they’re the ask. And hey, I need people to do work. That’s the bid. And you find a price. But the benefit of that is you increase the supply. You increase the supply of goods. You increase the supply of service providers, of contractors. There is a home building dearth right now in the United States. So this is an amazing opportunity because they can now move to LA, build homes. We can get a rapid reconstruction effort underway. Except the governor just said we can’t pay people 10% higher than what they were getting paid right before this happened on an indefinite basis. And then Karen Bass created a hotline. You can go to LA 311 and report people if they’re trying to charge too much. And then the, you know, the Stasi will come and investigate you and determine that you’re charging too much. I understand that there’s a strong moral imperative and incentive to say we got to stop price gouging. We don’t want people to get hurt. But the second order effect is you’re actually hurting the market and you’re hurting the rebuild effort because you’re reducing the incentive for folks to come in and fill the void In the market that is necessary for us to accelerate the development of 15,000 homes in a very short period of time. The alternative now is people are going to be sitting around. And I already spoke to a couple of friends, I’m sure you guys have, that are like, I try calling architects, I try calling contractors, people that live in this area that have been affected. I cannot get anyone to return my call. There is not enough service providers down there. You’re going to end up waiting six, seven years to get your home rebuilt. Now what do you do? You own a lot. You don’t have a home to live in. And then there’s this other thing where we can’t take unsolicited offers on the home. That was the other executive order. So if you want to pull that one up, the governor said it is illegal to make an unsolicited offer on a piece of real estate in one of these affected zip codes. I don’t know what happened in Hawaii that makes the governor keep referencing the Hawaii story as if there were people that were taken advantage of and we need to protect the citizens Of LA. But I’m pretty sure that having an increase in the number of offers coming in for real estate in one of these affected areas increases liquidity in the market. It increases the buying behavior, and that will ultimately drive prices up, and that will ultimately make it easier by having more liquidity for some of these folks who owned burned Down lots to be able to sell their lot, take their insurance check, move to another neighborhood, and go somewhere else because they’re going to have to otherwise wait six or seven years To build a home. (Time 0:27:17)
  • Inefficient Permitting
    • Chamath Palihapitiya highlights California’s slow permitting process, contrasting it with the rapid I-10 rebuild after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
    • He questions why permitting takes six months when a highway was rebuilt in 66 days. Transcript: David O. Sacks Any final thoughts on the rebuild and the free market in that regard? Chamath Palihapitiya I think this is where the government ineptitude is at its worst. I think that we need to dismantle this regulatory state that makes doing the right thing impossible. So specifically, the thing that Newsom did was essentially create a time expectation on when things will get permitted. And I think he said it was like six months. The problem is like, this is what just goes to show you how insane the state has become. Even if you get a permit within six months, and this is where I do agree with Freeburg, like getting service people in and being able to build something to spec safely is going to take three, Four, five, six years, and it’s going to be insane. And the example of the complete incompetence of the California state government is if you contrast and compare this with how the state was able to respond in the Northridge earthquake. And the crazy thing, which I thought was incredible was after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, they rebuilt I-10, right? Which is like, that is like a crazy artery in 66 days. Guys, they rebuilt it. Not they permitted it, not that they were trying to get the California Coastal Commission to opine on it, not a Sierra Club lawsuit about the upper land grouse. They rebuilt it. So you actually know what’s possible in California if tradesmen are allowed to go to work. They can build incredibly complicated things with safety, with speed. This is where Newsom, I don’t think, understands how the real market works. Because if you looked at that example, the real question you should be asking is, well, what has changed? Well, technology has gotten way better since then. The people are more skilled. There are more people to be able to do more of these jobs. And so why does it only take six months to just get the permit when in 120 days, you could just rebuild an entire highway? Similarly, why aren’t we saying that we expect these homes built in the next three years? Get these kids back in their homes and back in school. You (Time 0:44:57)
  • Reinventing Cities
    • Mark Pincus believes cities have lost their appeal and must innovate to compete.
    • He suggests focusing on safety, walkability, and economic and cultural opportunities to make cities attractive again. Transcript: David O. Sacks What do you think, Mark? You’re in favor of this? Speaker 1 Yeah, I think more generally, I feel like since the pandemic, what’s been on my mind a lot, living still in San Francisco, I wanted to start a social network called Still Here. It’s like, oh, you still live here? Me too. Some way for us to like come out of our houses and notice that you’re here and I’m here, but we never leave our homes. I walk around the city at my own risk. And I like the cities, I feel like cities have lost the point. Like they’ve lost the plot. Like why we’ve kind of, we still live in cities or value them. But I feel like we have to go back to first principles and think like, why did we move to cities in the first place and what was the value supposed to be and is that still the deal we’re getting Or is there to have to be a new deal because we used to live in a city because it was economic we were closer to our job and then we lived in a city because there was a high density of things that We wanted, cultural people, restaurants. And the best cities really were the ones that are fun to walk around. And then we got to a point where it’s not safe or clean to walk around. You don’t work in the city anymore. And San Francisco started to feel like this gigantic retirement community. It’s just all these people who still live here because their kids are in school, maybe, or they grew up here. A lot of our friends left, went to Austin and other places. And we started, I don’t know about Chamath, but I think, Dave, but I think our family has a conversation probably twice a year of, should we move? Why haven’t we moved? What’s wrong with us? And so there’s this questioning going on around cities, and I think it’s a good question. And I think cities need to innovate aggressively to be better. They have to compete with the other options again. They have to make it fun to be there, fun to work there. I think it’s great that Daniel Lurie is mayor of San Francisco, and he’s putting smart people around him. And they’re trying to rethink first some attacking these core problems, but also, how do we make San Francisco fun again? So I love things like congestion pricing, I think now is the time to try every new innovation that you ever thought of, and see what sticks and, and figure out like, how do you take this, This tax, not literally, I mean, New York has a big tax, but this tax on all of us, whether it is that you can’t walk across this city that you don’t feel safe, or that the good side of it being Fun to be in, you know, is that the deal is off. And so I think, you know, and I also, what I’m hoping Daniel Lurie does and other smart mayors is that they benchmark and they say, who’s doing it really well around the world, whether It’s dealing with homelessness or things like congestion pricing, who’s innovating and doing it well and why aren’t we doing it here? I mean, I think you got to reinvent these cities and, you know, sorry to sound cliche, but I think you got to kind of take a startup mentality and say, you’re not going to live on your incumbency Anymore. You’ve got to reinvent this. And we can’t make companies come back to work, you know, come back to the office. I mean, the companies can make their employees, but it’d be really nice if the employees wanted to be there. You know, and you can’t make people live in California. So, I’m in favor. Yeah. (Time 0:53:08)
  • Recall Unqualified Officials
    • Jason Calacanis urges Los Angeles citizens to recall unqualified officials like Karen Bass.
    • He emphasizes the power of recalls and encourages active citizen involvement. Transcript: David O. Sacks She left and stayed there knowing this was all coming. Rick Russo, who you didn’t vote for mayor, he did the right thing. Vote these people out. Recall Karen Bass. You can do it. We recall Chesa Boudin. You remember on this show, David Sachs is a Republican entrepreneur venture capitalist, good friend of mine. I’ll introduce you guys if you haven’t met him. He started a recall Chesa Boudin movement. I hired a journalist to cover the victims of crime in San Francisco. Chesa Boudin was out in 18 months. You can recall these people. They’re unqualified. Take action. Start a recall. They’ll tell you, oh, it’s not a good thing for continuity, whatever. These people are not qualified. They are not thinking in your best interest. You have no choice, citizens of Los Angeles, but to get these people out immediately. Every day they stay in office, they are going to cause more damage to your family, your property, and your city. (Time 1:06:49)
  • TikTok’s Uncertain Future
    • Mark Pincus acknowledges national security concerns regarding TikTok but worries about potential backlash if banned.
    • He believes a forced divestiture to an American company would be the best outcome. Transcript: David O. Sacks All right, TikTok’s future is in question right now. The ban is about to happen unless the pairing company, ByteDance, divests by January 19th, which is this Sunday, TikTok will be banned in America. Google and Apple are going to be forced to remove TikTok from their app stores, and Oracle, TikTok’s cloud provider, has to stop providing hosting services and cut ties, assuming ByteDance Doesn’t come up with a last-minute deal. TikTok’s only hope is the Supreme Court blocking the law. What do you think, Mark? Do you think it’s Chinese spyware? Do you think they should be forced to divest? What do you think their repercussions will be? Speaker 1 Here’s what’s so hard for me about this. On the one hand, part of it seems so obvious from both not just national security point of view, but also just fairness. It’s insane if you think about it, that there’s a Chinese company that’s arguing in court for protections under our constitution and freedom of speech when none of our companies have Those kinds of rights in China, much less the right to even operate there if they’re not majority controlled or in line like you guys talked about with censorship or whatever else. So on the one hand, it seems like a no brainer to me that on this case, but what you’re starting to see come up in the last couple of days, I’m even hearing it from one of my daughters, who’s A major TikToker is the law of unintended consequences here is that we could see this band, especially if they don’t get to a deal with somebody. And then the 170 million Americans, many younger Americans who rely on this, all of a sudden feel like this is censoring them and it’s taking away their freedom of expression. And it could backfire in a lot of ways. And we’re already seeing memes where they’re going on to these other apps. Like there’s this Chinese Redbook, which is even worse. I think that one is owned by the Chinese government. And so we’re driving them there. And so the best outcome, I think, would be forced to divest and sell to another American company. But if that doesn’t happen, I’m kind of nervous about a real backlash. David O. Sacks I’m delighted, Jamath, that our kids are going to go out and play and have friendships and stop scrolling on TikTok. What you described sounds awesome. Speaker 1 I literally get on their iPads and phones when I sometimes allow them to have phones and just delete the app and then they go get it back. Of course, of course. David O. Sacks Kids are out around it. What do you think, Chamath? What do you think is going to happen here? Chamath Palihapitiya I mentioned this to President Trump and I really think this is true. The reason why there was so much bipartisan support for the bill as it worked through Congress is because I think that they were briefed on just how severe the security violations of This app are. Because I don’t think we’ve seen anything in modern history that is this controversial yet be so almost unanimous. So I think that that’s an important data point. There is something happening in the app that they’ve been briefed on that makes them take this posture. And when I listened to the Supreme Court arguments, I didn’t hear a very compelling reason why this ban should be overturned. So I do agree with Mark that we have to find a suitable home. And I think that we’ll probably one, and I think that it probably happens under the Trump presidency. Whoever gets their hands on it gets their hands on an incredible asset that they will be able to buy extremely cheaply because there is no way that there is a fair market value here deal For that asset because whoever is the buyer is in the total catbird seat. And in order to get a deal done with the federal government, I think you’re just going to get a basically like a buy it now price that’s very cheap. The other thing that I’ll say though, on a totally separate tangent. So when I started hunting around, TikTok’s real-time recommendation algorithm was open source, the learning method. Nick, do you want to just throw it up here? It’s called Monolith. This is an incredible paper. The cleverness of what these guys have built cannot be underestimated. And what’s incredible is what they describe in this paper, which I think, frankly, a lot of social apps would benefit from understanding, is exactly how they built it to essentially Not take this more monolithic training approach for recommendations, but how do you do it in real time? How do you make it collisionless? It’s incredible. This paper is a tour de force. And it just makes me realize that despite the political maneuvering of this hot potato, there are some folks that have been working in that app or in the parent company that are truly Technically talented. And it’s a bit of a shame that they’re going to get sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. So people should know that there’s some technological innovations inside of ByteDance and TikTok that are just truly amazing feats of computer science. This is an example. It doesn’t though change the fact that I think that enough of Congress and the rest of the security apparatus know that this is a mechanism (Time 1:08:33)
  • MBA Devaluation
    • Mark Pincus believes declining MBA hiring reflects a mismatch between risk-averse graduates and the current economy.
    • He advises seeking practical experience instead of relying on an MBA for career security. Transcript: David O. Sacks Yeah, the same bet. Hey, guys, here’s a chart for you. Companies are not hiring as many MBAs. This is a recent spike in unemployment among MBAs from top business schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. I’m not sure. I think, Pincus, did you go to Harvard for your MBA? Guilty. Guilty. So, and you’ve also stopped working. So you’re represented here on the chart. Yeah. You still have a job, my friend. You still work. What are your thoughts on this? Are MBAs out of vogue? Are they opting out? What’s your theory here? Speaker 1 Well, so yes, I went there. I would say that all the learning that’s helped me in my career started later after I got out. My first product management job was really when I started learning things that are useful to me today. I think being there, I learned a lot about like how to sell to corporate America and some how do they think kind of things. And then I’ve gone back to HBS for decades trying to recruit from there. And in the beginning, they would tell me the kids would, when I had support.com and it was going to go public, they said, I’d have to be a vice president and own 3% of the company to take a Job with a startup like you. And this was just before the company went public. There was a little bit of a renaissance period where some HBS people were excited to join Zynga, probably because they thought it was going public, but they were a little more risk on At that point. And now everyone’s open to jobs. My take is that there’s this fundamental imbalance that people go and get an MBA because they’re de-risking their career. You go to HBS or Stanford and you’re guaranteed this high salary and this kind of great job for life. So the reason to go there is to take the risk off. That’s in fundamental opposition to where we are in our economy, in my opinion today, or where the most interesting sectors are. Those kinds of jobs have dried up. And the kinds of jobs that I think should be interesting to MBAs are more like, go find a Y Combinator company and join a founding team as the business person or whatever. And these people are smart and qualified, but there’s this mismatch that they are fundamentally risk averse. And so they’re not, so when it says they haven’t found jobs, part of it is, I think they’re going to have to fall further, or this might happen, so that a part of it, they have maybe debt, Or they have to pay back this expensive degree. But I think that they’ve got to get to a point like I was when I started my first company, Freeloader, I happily had very little to no opportunity costs, because I had torched my career By that point, torched my resume. I was fired or asked to leave every job. And so there was kind of no turning back. So can you imagine being Mark Vinkus’ boss? David O. Sacks I mean, that’s almost as hard as being Tremont. Speaker 1 Yeah, I always say I’m a great team player as long as I’m running the team. Right. Great quarterback. Yeah. But yeah, so I had no opportunity cost when I started my first company, which looked like it didn’t have a chance in hell, you know, of ever making it. So you probably thought so too then about my company. But so now the question is, maybe what’s going to happen is we’re going to get a new equilibrium where these, for these people start to come down, the guaranteed opportunities. And a good thing happens. Like consulting firms, right? David O. Sacks They all go to McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, whatever. Speaker 1 Or even the class I taught on Monday at Stanford, they said, everyone wants a job at Meta or Google. And that’s the get rich quick place. And I don’t even think that’s necessarily true anymore. And they can’t get those jobs because those companies are now trying to get rid of middle management. So those jobs have dried up. You know, part of what’s in this data probably also is a lot of these people aren’t taking jobs. They’re not finding jobs that meet this high expectation for pay and opportunity. So I think it’s a good thing. It also probably is going to reduce the demand to go into these MBA programs. Because if you’re thinking, well, that’s not going to be my risk off trade, and I’m not going to be guaranteed. 100%. So why go in the first place? And I would advise people today, depending on what industry, biased, but I’d say, go get a product management job somewhere and make enough that you can afford to live on it. And that’s going to be the beginning of learning. David O. Sacks I always think- Doing these Chamath, what are these things called when these MBAs graduate? They raise a bunch of money to go buy some real business- Search fund. Chamath Palihapitiya Yeah. That’s not happening anymore. Yeah. David O. Sacks That was like the name of the moment. None of them made money. Chamath Palihapitiya None of them made money. It turns out these MBAs don’t know what they’re doing. David O. Sacks Oh, yeah. So when they take over the business run by a family and some matriarch or patriarch for 50 years to get it to $25 million or $50 million? David Friedberg There’s that one deal out of Stanford GSB. The guy founded Asurion, which is like 10 billion. Chamath Palihapitiya That guy would have founded that company outside of Stanford. He could have gone to Timbuktu.com University. Disgratziad state and he would have been fine. That speaks to more about the cleverness of that one individual, not the 99,000 other deals that have been done. Let me say something that builds on what Pincus was saying, which is, I think that this is a interesting window into the future of AI, in the sense that I think what companies are internalizing Slowly, that the first place that AI disintermediates is actually middle management. You thought that it was the customer support person. Maybe you thought it was the engineer. Maybe you thought it was the designer. Maybe you thought it was the product manager. I think those are less true. (Time 1:19:14)
  • Future of Education
    • David Friedberg predicts the decline of MBA programs signals a broader higher education unwinding due to AI.
    • He suggests apprenticeships and self-learning empowered by AI will become more valuable. Transcript: David O. Sacks Freebert, any thoughts as we wrap here about this MBA chart? David Friedberg The collapse of the MBA program could be the beginning of the unwinding of the higher education market. Why, Seymour? Think this is the easiest one to discard first in an age of ai and automation and self-learning and i think that i mean i’ve been thinking a lot about i’ve i’ve young kids right so my kid My oldest kid is seven years old i had to think about that for a sec um so many kids now and um isn’t it great by the way i go through this all i don’t know i have to go i have to like what’s my kid’s Chamath Palihapitiya Birthday jamon has like a busload of children when you have when you have five i just had a fifth i think i got five five and you’re at four days no i have five i can’t i have to really think David Friedberg About all the birthdays fourth on the way but yeah, I would say I think a lot about whether or not it makes sense for my kids to go to undergrad. And I think like about going to classes as an undergrad. Certainly there’s the social experience. And I learned a lot in, you know, kind of working at a lab when I was there and doing other stuff. But those were like on the job experiences. I do think that the social experience and the practical experience can be gotten outside of the college infrastructure, this educational infrastructure. I cannot tell you guys how much time I spent. I just had a great idea. David O. Sacks I just had the best idea ever. The all inin MBA. Let’s start our own MBA program. David Friedberg I think that’s the whole point is people should get back to kind of an apprenticeship type model or a self-learning model. Everyone’s got their own personal tutor now. That’s what I think people aren’t realizing is anything you want to learn with AI. Speaker 1 Have you guys heard about what Johnny Ives has done with his kids? I’m pretty sure they skip college and they just went to work directly with him in his design firm. Exactly. I’m like, I’m taking him out to lunch because I want to interview him, but it’s… Exactly. I think that’s such an interesting… David O. Sacks We should have him on and talk about it. By the way, your daughters and my daughters want to start a podcast together, Pincus. Do you know what they want to name it? Oh, no, I don’t. Speaker 1 I don’t know if I should say it. I don’t know. I didn’t hear the name. I think Chamath’s daughter is in on this as well. I think it was another friend’s child who came up with the name. David O. Sacks They want to call it the Nepopod. Chamath’s got a couple kids. I’m here for it. I’m here for it. No, I think Freeberg nailed it on this one, because I just had Arush Selvin, who is the PM at Google doing deep research on This Week in Startups yesterday. And this product is nuts. And they designed it to basically be one of these like million dollar or $5 million reports you pay for from these consulting firms that MBA is right. And it does a better job. It’s more accurate. It’s done in five to 10 minutes. This thing fires off. Have you used deep research at Mark? Speaker 1 No, I keep hearing you talking about it. And I’m such an idiot about this stuff. It’s on the desktop. You can’t use the mobile and then I how to use it. David O. Sacks And it’s only a good time and you have to pay 20 bucks for it. And then Grok 2.0 is doing something similar. When you put your query in, it decides like all the second level queries that would be asked. Then it checks its work. So it’s firing off a spider that goes and crawls 150 pages in real time. Then it asks questions about the data. Then it says, what’s missing from this? So all the questions you would get from your manager, if you were working at Boston Consulting Group, where they tell some young MBA, hey, you missed this, you missed this, can you double Check this? Can you find double click on this? It goes and does those follow up questions. So and now you can do a cron job where you can say, take my research and every week do a update on it and fill in information and tell me the differences. So instead of just buying a Boston Consulting or McKinsey or whatever report, you build it and then have it. And the deep research is coming out. This is going to automatically refresh it in your Google Docs and then update you on what’s been changed. And so and Grok is doing it as well, except grok has all the tweets. So when you use grok now, did you see now at the top of the page, it says, and I think it’s only in the grok app, the dedicated app, they just launched last week, it shows you all the tweets. And it shows you all the web pages that it indexed for that query. So this is like putting somebody on a week long research project. And like I said, it takes between five and 10 minutes to do this. And it costs a massive amount of server capacity to do these real time, you know, 2300 queries are occurring behind your one. It’s nuts. David Friedberg I don’t know if you guys have been using advanced voice on chat GPT much, or do you guys get the voice? And so lately, anytime I kind of have come across an interesting topic, I end up finding that I just talked to chat GPT for like an hour or two. And I’ll be like in my car, like when I’m driving to work or going to a meeting, or I go for like a walk down to the coffee shop. I’m like, okay, so tell me about like, what happened during the ice age with respect to how quickly sea levels receded. And I start to gather and like, it’s basically like your own personal tutor. David O. Sacks I finally have a best friend, Mark. David Friedberg And I think that basically you end up seeing a future where if people are put into almost like the real world becomes the lab environment that is created in a very short window and small Amount of space in a college environment where you’re like in some like applied scape, that applied scape basically becomes the real world and you’ve got your college in your ear. You’ve basically got your tutors, your educational experience, your capabilities that you’re learning, and you learn more in real time. And I think that that’s what AI is going to take us to, which is basically going to destroy much of the value of higher education. And I think that this MBA piece is probably just the first step of many that’s going to ultimately erode the value of higher education. (Time 1:27:35)
  • UAP Encounters
    • Mark Pincus shares a story about a DOD contractor claiming war games inadvertently summoned UAPs/drones.
    • The contractor sought funding to recreate and film the phenomenon, but later went dark. Transcript: David Friedberg Mark, lately, we’ve been talking to all the guests about UFOs and UAPs. Welcome to Conspiracy, Quintana. You have a point of view on UFO UAP phenomena? I do. Speaker 1 And I guess everyone else has too, so I won’t be that weird an outlier. So first of all, I’ll just say, I don’t believe in UAPs, UFOs, and I don’t not believe in them. I’m just curious about it. And I’ve had this theory that something is going to happen, that we’re going to break our current understanding of physics theory and our physics laws. And so I’ve been looking for that moment. And one of those is around the UAPs. So I’ve been more and more curious and digging more and more. And I started working with a friend who made the movie Icarus on the idea of like a Netflix docuseries. I thought it should be funny and have somebody like a Larry David kind of character narrating it. But he said, maybe, maybe. He came back to me. He’s making a documentary about the fentanyl crisis and how China, documented how China has dumped it here. And he said, you’ve got to meet with me and this guy. I came, while he was working on that. He was interviewing a former DOD contractor who had worked for them for decades and said, you know, I’ve got a lot on fentanyl, but I have this whole other thing to show you about these UAPs. And he’ll just tell you his claim. His claim. So they came and met with me and we had to meet outside and put our phones in fairway bags. Faraday bags. Faraday bags. So it was a good setup, if nothing else. And he said, he claimed that in running these war games for the Defense Department, it inadvertently was summoning these UAPs, these drones and he had tons and tons of video of it and David O. Sacks Classified them i’m just telling you what he told me guess the drone all the drone videos look like they were shot on an eight millimeter 1968 camera wait wait hold on hold on jason mark Chamath Palihapitiya Just explain this so the united states is is war games. Yeah. And what is it doing exactly that’s causing these drones to show up? He did not tell me what were the… The games. Speaker 1 What were the exact triggers that… But he said different things would trigger a different one, and he classified them, and he said some of them were aggressive from an electronics and would take out electronics and communications. And he, so he was interested and my friend was interested in saying, okay, can you put up a couple people, um, a million and a half dollars to recreate this and film this. And I thought about it. I even had him go meet with Reed. And it didn’t move quickly. And then he went dark on us and stopped responding. And then some friends of mine went to a gathering at ***. And it was on multiple things related to this. And they said that this guy was there and that he summoned one of these. They kind of said it looked like a large drone. And my friends showed me some pictures that they took, which were really, it was at night and they were really grainy. Come on, stop. Come on, stop. David O. Sacks I’m not making this up. I’m just telling you. Just one piece of advice with this documentary film stuff. You know how to make $100 million in documentary films, right, Pincus? Yeah. Start with a billion. Start with a billion. You’re the mark in all of this. You’re just a mark. Speaker 1 This guy needs a million dollars to finish his house or something in Topanga Canyon. Fair. And you’re the way to do it. You’re the mark. I didn’t fund it. Okay, good. So all I’m saying is that I think that there’s a possibility that there is some kind of drone that’s getting, that is showing up. And I’m not saying it’s even from non-human (Time 1:34:37)