All-In PodcastE15: “The Besties” All-In’s inaugural award show covering the best, worst & most memorable of 2020
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
All-In Besties 2020: Winners, Losers, SPACs, and Political Circus
- This episode of the All-In Podcast is formatted as an irreverent year-end awards show—the “Besties”—where Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, David Friedberg, and Jason Calacanis name the biggest winners, losers, flash-in-the-pan moments, and best/worst moves of 2020 across politics, business, and culture.
- They praise standout successes like Elon Musk, Airbnb’s turnaround, Moderna’s mRNA vaccine, AlphaFold, Zoom, SPACs, and the NBA bubble, while calling out perceived failures including Facebook/Google’s antitrust woes, small business devastation from lockdowns, “defund the police,” and Rudy Giuliani’s post-election antics.
- The group repeatedly returns to themes of centrism versus extremes, censorship and media bias, institutional failure during COVID, and how regulatory and political choices amplified or hindered technological breakthroughs and economic resilience.
- Despite heavy topics, the tone stays comedic and personal—weight-loss bets, “wet your beak” investing jokes, Giuliani fart memes—and ends on a sincere note about friendship, mental health, and gratitude to listeners after a brutal year.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasCentrism quietly won 2020 even as extremes dominated the noise.
The hosts frame Joe Biden’s victory as a win for centrist politics and a loss for both the populist right (Trumpism) and the far left, arguing that broad coalitions still beat ideological purity in national elections.
COVID simultaneously punished real-world businesses and supercharged tech and biotech.
Small businesses—especially restaurants, retail, hospitality, and movie theaters—were decimated by lockdowns, while companies like Tesla, Zoom, Moderna, and Airbnb saw massive value creation through either digital leverage or successful crisis navigation.
Regulation can delay breakthroughs as much as science can enable them.
Friedberg notes mRNA vaccines and AI protein folding (AlphaFold) had been scientifically viable for years; only when regulatory barriers dropped under pandemic pressure did they move at “warp speed,” suggesting underappreciated opportunity cost in normal times.
Network effects and time in market are more valuable than market timing.
The group criticizes Slack’s sale and praises long-term compounding bets (Twilio, Tesla, SPAC-backed winners), with Friedberg calling his own hedging/selling in March his “dumbest move,” reinforcing Buffett’s idea that time in market beats timing the market.
Media bias and platform censorship have eroded trust and fueled polarization.
They argue mainstream outlets (e.g., New York Times) chased anti-Trump subscription economics, while platforms outsourced truth to the WHO and engaged in uneven moderation, making conspiracy thinking and cultural division more likely.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotes“Centrism was the big winner… and the extreme left and the extreme right were the huge, huge, huge losers.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“Elon basically bended all the haters until he crushed their souls.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“Tech stocks are at all-time highs… but it was the small business people who got absolutely decimated by these lockdowns, which don’t even work.”
— David Sacks
“It’s not about timing the market. It is about time in market.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya (quoting Warren Buffett)
“The media ripped the umpire jersey off their backs to go after Trump. Well, they got him, but at what cost? Half the country will never trust them again.”
— David Sacks
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