E139: Recapping Chamath's wedding, VC surplus, unions vs Hollywood, room-temp superconductors & more

1. 0:00 – 11:55

   All-In in Italy!: Recapping Chamath's wedding

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      Love you guys. Uh, hey, if you guys are a- around, you know, and uh-

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:04

      Anyone want to get a glass of wine and some pasta?

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:06

      ... maybe we'll get a glass of wine later.

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:08

      Yeah.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:08

      Maybe next week or something. Who knows? Maybe we all get together in person and have a glass of wine.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:12

      I'll see you soon. I love you guys.

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:14

      Yeah, bye. Bye. Bye.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:14

      That's so nice. I love you besties. Ciao.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:17

      Ciao, ciao. Ciao, ciao. (whoosh)

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:18

       You're about to come to Italy and basically you're gonna gain 15 pounds, for sure.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg0:23

       (laughs) No. Okay, so we were there in Italy.

   12. JCJason Calacanis0:24

       This is a long time ago. Is this when we were in Venice?

   13. DSDavid Sacks0:27

       The quality of Italian white wine is outrageous.

   14. JCJason Calacanis0:30

       Really?

   15. DSDavid Sacks0:30

       It's outrageous.

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:32

       Do they have a men's bikini for you?

   17. DSDavid Sacks0:34

       Oh my god. I would buy that.

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:34

       For when we're in Italy?

   19. DSDavid Sacks0:35

       I would buy that.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg0:36

       (laughs)

   21. JCJason Calacanis0:36

       Let's just say thank you to the amazing people of Italy for having-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:41

       Oh, what an incredible country.

   23. JCJason Calacanis0:41

       ... the greatest country for adults to go on vacation in.

   24. DSDavid Sacks0:44

       What an incredible country.

   25. JCJason Calacanis0:48

       Here we go. In three, two... Hey. Oh, ah, he- uh.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:52

       Hey, everybody.

   27. JCJason Calacanis0:52

       Uh, three, two-

   28. DFDavid Friedberg0:54

       Someone's going through puberty.

   29. JCJason Calacanis0:55

       Hey, everybody. Wel-... Motorcycle.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg0:57

       Try it again.
2. 11:55 – 21:56

   Discourse around obesity and weight loss in the US

   1. JCJason Calacanis11:55

      But we had a great time. There's been a lot of news. Uh...

   2. DFDavid Friedberg11:57

      And J-Cal, you got here early, right? Weren't you, like, camping along the coastline because you wanted to see the sunset?

   3. JCJason Calacanis12:01

      Yes, I went to check the tide.

   4. GUGuest12:03

      You went camping. (laughs)

   5. DFDavid Friedberg12:04

      You went camping.

   6. GUGuest12:04

      He was trying to-

   7. DFDavid Friedberg12:04

      Decided to bring San Francisco to this beautiful, pristine-

   8. JCJason Calacanis12:08

      (laughs)

   9. DSDavid Sacks12:08

      Defecating everywhere. (laughs)

   10. DFDavid Friedberg12:09

       Yes.... leaving a trail of needles in his wake. Ozempic needles. (laughs)

   11. JCJason Calacanis12:13

       Ozempic needles.

   12. DFDavid Friedberg12:13

       Ozempic needles. Wegovy.

   13. DSDavid Sacks12:15

       Plastic trash.

   14. JCJason Calacanis12:16

       (laughs)

   15. DSDavid Sacks12:16

       He was trying to show he had Ozempic.

   16. JCJason Calacanis12:17

       I did pu- I did post a thirst trap.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg12:19

       (laughs)

   18. JCJason Calacanis12:19

       I'm very proud. I'm down 41 pounds from the peak.

   19. DSDavid Sacks12:22

       (laughs)

   20. JCJason Calacanis12:23

       Uh, 20 pounds with, uh, hiking and using the fasting app that Kevin Rose built, and then the other half, uh, Zero, great fasting app, and the other half was Ozempic, Wegovy.

   21. DSDavid Sacks12:32

       I don't understand. What does an app do to help you fast? You just fast. You just don't eat.

   22. JCJason Calacanis12:35

       Uh, you click a button.

   23. DSDavid Sacks12:36

       Do you eat the app?

   24. JCJason Calacanis12:37

       It gives an animation.

   25. DSDavid Sacks12:38

       And not food?

   26. JCJason Calacanis12:38

       And then it-

   27. DSDavid Sacks12:39

       Oh, I see. (laughs)

   28. JCJason Calacanis12:39

       ... counts down the clock.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg12:40

       Y- y- wh- when you're trying to decide whether to eat or not, you push a button, "Should I eat or not?" And it says no.

   30. DSDavid Sacks12:44

       (laughs)
3. 21:56 – 38:18

   Are there too many VCs?

   1. GUGuest21:56

   2. JCJason Calacanis21:56

      So, there was an article in Vice, I guess, that namechecked the All-In podcast and said young people, instead of wanting to become McKinsey consultants, now want to become members of the All-In podcast and be venture capitalists. I did a little tweet storm that I thought- and I thought it'd be a great topic for us. I- I think for young people going into venture early is not a good idea. I think, generally speaking, 80% of the case- cases. And I think starting your own company or joining a high-growth company or maybe joining a well-run large company, or even joining a poorly run large company so you learn what not to do, are all better things to do in your 20s. Learn, be in the trenches. But I'm curious what you think, Sax-

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya22:42

      Yeah.

   4. JCJason Calacanis22:42

      ... about this issue, because we came to venture and investing in our 40s, I believe, you know, both of us angel investors, and then both of us having fun. So, what are you- advising a young person who's listening to the podcast coming out of gr- business school or whatever.

   5. GUGuest22:55

      Yeah, I agree with that. Um, I think the main, uh, value prop that a VC has to offer a founder is advice. And if you've never walked in the founder's shoes before, if you've never founded a company or at least had a significant operating role, how are you in a position to offer them advice? Now, I think there was a period of time during the bull market where people stopped thinking that way, stopped thinking that advice was the model. VCs started competing on the base of who could be the biggest cheerleader for the founder, who could offer the most sort of positive emotional support-

   6. JCJason Calacanis23:30

      Largest valuation.

   7. GUGuest23:32

      ... or the biggest valuation or least governance. Um, the idea of being completely passive, not taking a board seat was actually sold to founders as a positive for them, that, like, "We'll invest and we'll just, like, stay completely out of the way." And all of those ideas sounded really good when the market was booming and everything was up and to the right. But now, we're in a situation in which we're going through two years of intense turmoil, and a lot of companies aren't gonna make it. A lot of companies are restructuring. A lot of companies are gonna take down rounds. And actually being able to tap your board for advice on how to get through a rough patch actually is pretty important. You realize now that, like, the uninvolved passive investor, that was not-... a, a positive value prop. That was an excuse for not having a value prop. And I think at times like this, it's really important to have VCs who've been around the block, who saw the last downturn, who ideally could have warned you that it was coming.

   8. JCJason Calacanis24:31

      Like we did on this pod for 18 months.

   9. GUGuest24:32

      Like we did repeatedly for, you know-

   10. JCJason Calacanis24:34

       Yes.

   11. GUGuest24:34

       ... a year.

   12. JCJason Calacanis24:34

       18 months, yeah. (laughs)

   13. GUGuest24:36

       And so, yeah, I think that we're now seeing the correction. And I, I fundamentally agree with your analysis that there are too many people who joined the ranks of VC who fundamentally didn't have a value prop. And that's why, I mean, at our firm, we require that everyone who joins the investment team have operating experience, and ideally founder experience, uh, because that is ultimately what you're gonna offer founders.

   14. JCJason Calacanis24:57

       Chamath, was too much of this people LARPing, live action role playing, VC with just absolutely no idea how this works? And now, what happens to those, you know, actor VCs who really are faced with portfolios that are upside down and they really have no idea how to weather a storm? It's, this has been a hard 18 months, let's be honest.

   15. DSDavid Sacks25:21

       Well, I think that it was a symptom of s- just the fact that there was a lot of free money in the system. And I don't know, the outcome is gonna be pretty basic, which is that they're gonna lose money for their limited partners. And those limited partners, if they're not totally stupid, will never give these people money again. And these people will need to just find a new job. And I don't say that in a celebratory way, it's just a very practical ones and zeros monetary assessment of the facts. Look, I think that the weird thing that has happened is that it became, like, this kind of fun thing to be able to say you were doing. A lot of people used to moonlight and do it on the side. Then there were all these services that would allow you to basically, like, abstract the job. But the only thing that I would just qualify your statement, 'cause I think what you're saying is, like, 90% right, but I don't think that's where the craziest outcome returns have come from. Because if you look at the two people that are really, or the three people that have really generated just gargantuan home run dr- returns on a consistent basis, one of them, for example, like Mike Moritz, really didn't have those bona fides operationally. But I think that what Mike pr- h- probably has, and I'm saying this not knowing him, is a preternatural, like, judge of psychology, I think. I think he's an incredibly qualified people judger. And there are people like that. Now, he's an outlier in order to do that, but the rest of us have to kind of, to your point, do with what we have, which is like, "Here's our experience and our maturity, and you know, we're telling you what we think." So I'm really excited actually for this wave to kind of crash on shore, because the number of founders that are gonna get screwed over by folks that don't know what they're talking about is very high.

   16. JCJason Calacanis27:03

       Yeah.

   17. DSDavid Sacks27:03

       And that needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.

   18. GUGuest27:05

       Free bird, yeah.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:06

       Yeah, I don't think it's just Mike Moritz. I think that there's a class of successful venture capitalists. Bill Gurley's a great example. Like, he was an analyst. Danny Reimer at Index Ventures was an investment analyst. Um-

   20. JCJason Calacanis27:18

       Fred Wilson. Um...

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:20

       Fred Wilson.

   22. JCJason Calacanis27:20

       Yeah. Well, a lifetime VC, yeah.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:22

       Um, and, and Moritz, John Doerr. I mean, John Doerr had some-

   24. JCJason Calacanis27:25

       Uh, Doerr worked at Intel.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya27:25

       Yeah, he worked at Intel. Um, but there's, there are folks who have an incredible analytical capacity, and that analytical capacity translates into incredible selection capability. That selection doesn't necessarily mean that they are gonna necessarily be the best advisors. And I'm not saying that any of those folks are bad advisors. But there are some venture investors, like Founders Fund is very vocal about this and very public about this, that their objective is not to be your partner in helping you make decisions and run your company and recruit people and all the other sort of rigamarole that many VCs go out and tout. They are there to pick the best founders. And the best founders don't need the VC to be successful. And their job then is to have incredible selection capacity. So if they can select the best founders and get out of their way, they've made a lot of money and their returns are unbelievable. And then there are some VCs who are really incredible partners to their founders and their objective. Josh Kopelman at First Round built an entire firm around this practice, which is to partner very closely with founders and to build support and capabilities. Andreessen Horowitz was built on the same sort of concept.

   26. JCJason Calacanis28:30

       Closest to Mike.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya28:30

       That they would, that they would roll all of their fees into building operating support and capacity to support founders and support companies. Both firms have obviously done well in their own right. Um, and so I don't know if there's necessarily one breed that predicts success when it comes to successful venture capital. I will say from my own personal experience, I worked as an investment banker for my first two years out of undergrad. I, you know, worked, I had a science background. I worked in, a short stint in private equity, I worked at Google, I did corp dev and M&A there. I started a company, ran it, sold it, did that with another business where I was on the board. So, you know, I've, I've been on a couple of different places around the table that, you know, I think have given me the ability to, to provide advice. I don't know if I necessarily have the same skill set that the team at Founders Fund and, um, Mike Moritz and others might have, had this astute extraordinary ability to spot founders a- and bring them in. So I think everyone needs to kind of recognize what they do bring to the table, be, uh, very clear about what that is. And I think to your point, there has just been an incredible bull market over the last 15 years. Since 2008, more money has... I, I heard an incredible statistic, by the way. Um, I don't want to get it wrong, so maybe we should fact check me after this, from someone at your wedding, uh, who I was talking to for a long time. And he was like, (laughs) he was like, "Basically, the top 1% of VCs didn't beat what would have happened if you just bought the top five public tech companies and, you know, effectively did a rebalance over the past 15 years." The bull market and the, um, the aggregation of value in technology has largely been 50/50 to public and private.

   28. JCJason Calacanis30:01

       Yeah.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya30:01

       So, you could have just bought a few stocks and held onto them and beat all of the VCs over the last 15 years. Even though a bunch of VCs have made good money and their IRR looks like 12%, but you have to beat-

   30. DSDavid Sacks30:11

       No, the risk adjusted returns on venture-
4. 38:18 – 54:07

   Actors/Writers union vs. Corporate Hollywood, endgame for the modern Hollywood machine

   1. GUGuest38:18

      In Pod.

   2. Did anybody see Oppenheimer yet?

   3. No.

   4. I'm so excited.

   5. DSDavid Sacks38:21

      I, I didn't really see it.

   6. GUGuest38:21

      It's, it's gonna be a Barbenheimer double feature.

   7. Barbenheimer, Barbenheimer.

   8. DSDavid Sacks38:24

      In honor of the Barbenheimer wedding.

   9. GUGuest38:26

      Yeah. I'm not-

   10. (laughs)

   11. ... I'm not Barbenheimering it. I, I, I'm good.

   12. DSDavid Sacks38:28

       (laughs)

   13. GUGuest38:28

       That's a good one, the Barbenheimer one.

   14. I wanna see it on IMAX.

   15. 'Cause no one-

   16. I, I think we sh-

   17. No one had a... Nolan's like, so about 70 millimeter prints. He's like, "You have to watch it in 70 millimeter."

   18. Do you know the Metreon, uh, Metreon in-

   19. In the city.

   20. Is it?

   21. That's-

   22. So we should just rent the theater and invite some fans.

   23. Or just go. Yeah, I mean, we should do that. That's actually a great idea.

   24. No, we should just rent the... Let's rent it.

   25. This week.

   26. I've rented it before. It's, I think it's sold out until August 6th.

   27. I have very limited time. Oh, the theater is.

   28. We just have to call them and say, "Hey, can we rent the thing?"

   29. They'll do a show.

   30. "Here's 20 dimes."
5. 54:07 – 1:05:04

   Equity participations vs. unions, ownership upside vs. downside protections

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:07

      great.

   2. DSDavid Sacks54:07

      On the union thing, I'll tell you a story. So recently, it was just announced that Anchor Steam shut down. Anchor Steam was this beer, this native beer in San Francisco that's been around forever.

   3. JCJason Calacanis54:16

      Japanese brewery bought them, right?

   4. DSDavid Sacks54:18

      It was bought by Sapporo several years ago. And-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:20

      An- Anchor Steam shut down?

   6. DSDavid Sacks54:21

      Anchor Steam shut down.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:22

      You're kidding me.

   8. DSDavid Sacks54:22

      Yeah.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:23

      I used to go there all the time-

   10. DSDavid Sacks54:24

       Yeah.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:24

       ... for, like, work events. You'd do, like, an off-site there and go to the brewery. It's in, uh-

   12. DSDavid Sacks54:27

       Yeah. It was, like, one of the original microbrews.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:29

       Potrero Hill. Yeah, fantastic.

   14. JCJason Calacanis54:30

       Iconic.

   15. DSDavid Sacks54:30

       Uh, award-winning beer.

   16. JCJason Calacanis54:31

       Great beer.

   17. DSDavid Sacks54:31

       Iconic. Well, it's out of business now.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:33

       You're kidding.

   19. DSDavid Sacks54:33

       And the reason is-

   20. JCJason Calacanis54:35

       Let me guess.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya54:35

       (laughs)

   22. DSDavid Sacks54:35

       Well, it was losing money. And you wanna know why, is because three years ago, the workers all voted to unionize.

   23. GUGuest54:41

       ... there were only something like 60 workers, 62 workers. And three years ago, they vote to unionize, and they voted themselves big pay increases.

   24. JCJason Calacanis54:48

       Yeah.

   25. GUGuest54:49

       And so I guess Sapporo had to go along with it. Three years later, Sapporo's just like, "Eh," shut the whole thing down.

   26. JCJason Calacanis54:54

       Um, I think-

   27. GUGuest54:54

       And that, and that's, and that's the thing is you gotta be careful what you wish for.

   28. JCJason Calacanis54:57

       This is, this is-

   29. DSDavid Sacks54:57

       Overplay your hand I, I, I really think the thing with unions that they get wrong is unions fight for exactly this, which is this short-term increase in current compensation. And I think what unions do very poorly is actually understanding the long-term equity that the employees and members of that union actually create. I tweeted this a few weeks ago as well, but the single biggest reason that motivated me when I sold my piece of the Warriors was obviously just the crazy increase in the valuation, right?

   30. JCJason Calacanis55:29

       Yes.
6. 1:05:04 – 1:06:50

   Potential impact of room-temp superconductors

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:05:04

      wrap time, I think.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:04

      Would you wanna do a quick science corner update? I got a lot of texts this week.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:05:07

      Oh, actually.

   4. GUGuest1:05:08

      Room temp super conductor?

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:09

      Yeah. Yeah. Did you see this?

   6. GUGuest1:05:09

      Oh, there is a, uh ... Actually, it's a-

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:11

      Look, well-

   8. GUGuest1:05:11

      ... very, uh, interesting, um, warp control.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05:13

      You, you may remember a few episodes ago ... And if you, if you don't remember, you kinda can go back and watch it, um, where I talked a little bit about the effort to try and identify a material that can be superconducting at room temperature, which means no resistance. Electrons can flow through the material with no re- resistance, perfect, um, electricity transfer across distance, and also enables the Meissner effect, where magnetic waves can reflect off of the material, which can allow things like levitating trains, which is very low friction transportation. All these benefits of superconducting materials, uh, quantum computing, et cetera. So yesterday, and, and I've gotten literally dozens of emails and notes about this in the last 12 hours, there was a paper published by a team in South Korea who seem like a very legit team. There's no reason why they would kind of make a, a fraudulent claim that there's a material that they've identified and measured to show has superconducting properties at room temperature and ambient pressure, where a lot of these efforts historically have been made at room temperature but they use 200 times atmospheric pressure to compress it. And it turns out that this material that they're using is a lead, uh, apatite, which is a, uh, it's a hexagonal crystal that uses, uh, calcium phosphate and lead, and that some of the cal- uh, the lead gets replaced with copper, and the copper causes the hexagon, the crystal structure to compress a little bit. That compressed crystal allows the electrons to flow through. This is their theoretical explanation on what's going on. It will be replicated. People will try and do what they are now claiming they did to demonstrate this. There were some condensed matter physics people that sent me an email and said they don't think that this is real. They have great deal of skepticism.

Episode duration: 1:17:46