E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

Jason Calacanis 0:00 (music plays) All right, everybody. Welcome back. It is our fourth annual Bestie Awards. Yes, everybody is incredibly excited to hear the biggest winners in politics and losers in business, best science breakthrough, so many amazing categories. With me again, Chairman Dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, or Billionaire POC. Welcome back to the program, Chamath. (laughs) BIPOC. BIPOC. That's what I said, Billionaire POC. Billionaire Person of Color. Yes, please get it right.

David Sacks 0:28 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:28 And running the All-In DEI group, the Rain Man himself, David Sacks. Welcome back to the program.

David Sacks 0:34 Good to be here.

Jason Calacanis 0:35 Okay. And-

David Sacks 0:36 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 0:36 ... The Sultan of Science. Welcome back to the program. Are you ready with your selections, gentlemen? Are we ready to do this?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:43 J-Kal, this is the holiday episode. You gotta have a little more cheer. This isn't all business, dude.

David Sacks 0:48 Cue the music, Nick.

Jason Calacanis 0:49 Three, two ... (instrumental music plays) Yes. And here we are, everybody, back again for the 2023 Bestie Awards. (clapping) This is where everybody goes crazy. Oh my god. Standing ovation.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05 Hold on. Who's drinking some champagne with me? I need some-

Jason Calacanis 1:07 Champagne popping.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:08 What are you guys drinking?

Jason Calacanis 1:09 These are the awards. Everybody wants to know who's gonna be a winner.

David Sacks 1:12 You're right. I need a drink. Hold on.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:14 He needs a drink for this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:16 I need a drink too. Can you, can I go get a drink? Hang on.

Jason Calacanis 1:18 Everybody get a drink. Loosen it up.

David Sacks 1:19 I'm at my office. I don't have alcohol here.

Jason Calacanis 1:21 (laughs) Look in the second drawer.

David Friedberg 1:23 Don't let your winners ride.

Jason Calacanis 1:26 Rain Man, David Sacks.

David Friedberg 1:30 I'm going all in.

David Sacks 1:31 As I said, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:34 Love you, bestie.

Jason Calacanis 1:35 Queen of Quinoa.

David Friedberg 1:37 I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 1:39 All right, everybody. Welcome to the Bestie Awards for 2023.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:44 What are you drinking?

Jason Calacanis 1:44 I've got a little Veuve Clicquot. You know I love my Veuve.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:46 Are you actually gonna drink it?

Jason Calacanis 1:48 You know what? I ... People don't know this about me, but, uh, that was, um, my beverage of choice, was the old Veuve Clicquot when I would go out in New York. What have you got there, Sacks? What are you drinking for the 2023 Bestie Awards? What are you drinking?

David Sacks 2:00 I'm drinking my Clase Sol Reposado-

Jason Calacanis 2:04 Hmm.

David Sacks 2:04 ... in a glass with a single big rock. And I broke out my, uh, patriotic Great Seal of the United States glass.

Jason Calacanis 2:12 This is a tribute to the border. You've got a little bit of Mexico-

David Sacks 2:15 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:15 ... a little bit of the United States. And is it-

David Sacks 2:17 That's right.

Jason Calacanis 2:17 ... flowing between the border and you? Is that it? It's open border now.

David Sacks 2:20 Uh, the border s completely-

Jason Calacanis 2:21 Open border for Christmas?

David Sacks 2:21 ... open at this point. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:22 Gotcha. Okay. (laughs)

David Sacks 2:24 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:24 Just flooding in?

David Sacks 2:25 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 2:26 Chamath, you're not drinking. You're at the office. Friedberg, sure.

David Sacks 2:29 Uh, I mean, I didn't, I didn't plan. I brought my props to wish everybody happy holidays, to come see family.

Jason Calacanis 2:35 Oh, nice. It's beautiful, your set design.

David Sacks 2:36 And this festive sweater.

Jason Calacanis 2:37 Amazing. Friedberg, everybody knows that you're a, a quiet solo drinker in your darkest hours.

David Sacks 2:42 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:42 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:43 What are you drinking? There's no surprises there. What are you drinking?

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:47 I'm always drinking when I gotta hang out with you, J-Kal. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:49 I know.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:49 I'm drinking a Victoria Beer.

David Sacks 2:50 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:51 A Victoria Beer? All right. Well-

David Sacks 2:52 That is true, actually.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:53 Yeah.

David Sacks 2:53 I don't think you hang out with J-Kal sober, do you?

Jason Calacanis 2:56 Oh, everybody. There it is. Woo.

David Sacks 2:58 Light's on, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 2:59 We've got the Veuve Clicquot. Unfortunately, at my ski house, I can't find the flutes, so I'm gonna put this in a wine glass. Sorry for the sacrilege. But cheers. Here's to another amazing year of the All-In podcast and the Besties hanging out. Cheers.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:11 You wanna say a few words, J-Kal? Like-

Jason Calacanis 3:13 Yeah, I'd like to say a few words.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:14 ... maybe in, in memoriam of the year?

Jason Calacanis 3:16 Yes. Working with you guys has been delightful, miserable, and everything in between.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:20 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:20 Congratulations on all of our success, and, uh, here's to an amazing 2024. And hopefully we find a CEO and we can keep this thing going for another 150 or so episodes. Nobody thought we would get here. Everybody hates us for our success. And (censored) the mids and the haters. Love you, besties. Cheers.

David Sacks 3:41 Well, I, I would like to make a toast.

Jason Calacanis 3:43 Here we go.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:44 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:44 Here is to three of the most talented-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:48 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:49 ... warm, friendly guys, and J-Kal.

Jason Calacanis 3:53 Yeah, I knew it was coming. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:55 (laughs)

David Sacks 3:55 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:55 Opened that joke format for me. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:57 I told you, that one. I taught you misdirection. Don't ever forget it, brother. (laughs)

David Sacks 4:02 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:02 All right. Well, to three of the most sincere, heartfelt, intelligent, loving individuals, and David Sacks. Welcome to the program.

David Sacks 4:11 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:11 We've got a big (laughs) , huge lineup here for you.

Jason Calacanis 4:14 And let's just get to it. We're gonna give our 2023 award for the biggest winner in politics last year. Chamath, you said that your prediction for 2023 ... Now, we're gonna give the actual award for 2023, but in our predictions episode last year, you said you were long Nikki Haley and short DeSantis. What a prescient call. What do you have this year?

David Sacks 4:35 That spread trade paid off in spades.

Jason Calacanis 4:38 Yeah.

David Sacks 4:38 But-

Jason Calacanis 4:38 Big spread trade.

David Sacks 4:39 Looking back, I think the biggest political winner was Donald Trump.

Jason Calacanis 4:44 Okay.

David Sacks 4:45 I think that the documents case galvanized his leadership in the Republican nomination, and I think that this move by the Colorado Supreme Court basically sealed the deal. I think he is going to run away with the Republican nomination, and barring some catastrophic meltdown, has a better chance to get into the White House than before this Colorado case. So, he was the biggest political winner, I think, of 2023. It just seems to me that if I had to really put it in a nutshell, I think that the, the Dems, in this weird way, actually want Trump back in office more than the Republicans do, because everything they've done-

Jason Calacanis 5:29 Hmm.

David Sacks 5:30 ... has been nearsighted and, I think, has actually galvanized his support and increased his popularity and his ability to fundraise more than anything else.

Jason Calacanis 5:41 Friedberg, who is your biggest political winner of 2023?

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:47 Who did I give it to last year? Do, do you remember?

Jason Calacanis 5:49 You gave it to MBS and Saudi, that they would have the ... Your prediction was they would have the most-

Chamath Palihapitiya 5:55 No, not prediction.

Jason Calacanis 5:55 ... important year of the modern er. Well, but in some ways, I think they are center stage in the conflicts in the Middle East, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:00 That's what I thought. Uh, yeah. So, I am giving my biggest winner-

Jason Calacanis 6:02 It's not a bad one. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 6:02 I'm giving my biggest political winner award to the nation state of Saudi Arabia.

Jason Calacanis 6:07 Oh, wow.

David Friedberg 6:07 Like, they are sitting in the middle of the US, China, Iran, Israel, Russia. They have relations with all of those nations and relations where they are trying to be productive.

Jason Calacanis 6:20 Hmm.

David Friedberg 6:20 Extraordinary leverage with both their capital, their geographic positioning, and their energy resourcing, and painting a very positive future on how they want to reinvest their capital and modernize the country. And I think one of the biggest coups that they pulled this year was turning JCAL to being a big promoter of Saudi after his visit to the Middle East. And so I think they're entering 2024 with great strength and leverage, so I give them credit for riding out many storms this year and coming out ahead. So it's just, it's been interesting to watch. I'm not, I'm not close or tied to them in any way, but I just think from a global leverage point of view, they seem to be in a very strong place. So that's my-

Jason Calacanis 7:01 Yeah.

David Friedberg 7:01 ... my award.

Jason Calacanis 7:02 I can't disagree with you that the place has made incredible progress. Personal freedoms, economic freedoms, the- they're, the country is evolving and embracing every country on the planet, right? So you, you have to take that as a win. I have no business interest there, but I, I am impressed with the progress. So Sacks, that means it's your turn to give us your 2023 biggest winner.

David Sacks 7:29 My biggest winner in politics, J Cal, I think you'll like this one, is abortion rights.

Jason Calacanis 7:34 Abortion rights, huh?

David Sacks 7:35 A- Abortion rights. After Dobbs, abortion rights are winning on every battle where they're at issue.

Jason Calacanis 7:41 Hmm.

David Sacks 7:41 It's won referenda in very red states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio. It swung legislatures to the Dems in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. It swung states from court races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I'd go so far as to say it's the Democrats only winning issue, and they are putting it on the ballot everywhere they can. Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out around 30 years ago that we likely could have reached this resolution decades ago if the courts hadn't stolen the issue from the political process, because abortion rights were in the process of being liberalized everywhere.

Jason Calacanis 8:14 Hmm.

David Sacks 8:15 And, m- in my view, the political process is messy, but it's how we finally move past the issue as a nation, which is why I think Dobbs was the right decision, even if it was a difficult one.

Jason Calacanis 8:26 Huh, interesting. So you are smoothing over Trump's taking away the right for women to choose and saying that this is a net positive for the country, if I'm reading it correctly.

David Sacks 8:37 Well, T- Trump didn't take anything away. The Supreme Court-

Jason Calacanis 8:39 Well, he placed the three people who didn't, right? The Supreme Court's gone.

David Sacks 8:43 The Supreme Court didn't take anything away. The Supreme Court... Hold on, I, I just explained it. You're not listening. The Supreme Court gave the issue back to the democratic process. The democratic process is now voting to maintain abortion rights, and that is gonna settle the issue once and for all.

Jason Calacanis 8:57 Interesting framing.

David Sacks 8:58 So all of your fears that abortion rights would fall by the wayside because of the Supreme Court decision have actually proven to be null and void. What we're ending up with is a better solution where the country doesn't need to fight about this anymore because the voters have expressed the will of the people.

Jason Calacanis 9:14 Fantastic framing. Great save for the Republican Party there, in my opinion.

David Sacks 9:17 Well, it, it won't be unless they learn how to talk about the issue.

Jason Calacanis 9:20 Yeah, I mean-

David Sacks 9:21 So-

Jason Calacanis 9:22 ... the, the way I would frame the same issue is that, uh, Trump stacked the deck to take away women's right to choose in order to get elected. But, uh, your framing is pretty good too, and you're a master of framing these things. So I was torn here for mine. I had two different choices. I was either gonna go with Nikki Haley, because what an amazing feat for her to, to even be getting close to Trump in some of these primaries. But I think really the biggest winners in this year of 2023 were non-traditional candidates actually becoming somewhat viable and capturing the imagination of young people. Vivek, RFK, and Dean Phillips being, I think, the three leading candidates. So I'm gonna go with the non-traditional candidates being the big winners for 2023. And for last year, I had said that my prediction was (laughs) that what, for 2023 was that Trump would get indicted, win the nomination, and then agree to not run because he gets a pardon. So I think I've got two or three of those, uh, in the parlay in the bag.

Jason Calacanis 10:26 Let's go on to biggest loser. The biggest loser in politics. When we did our predictions for 2023, Chamath, you said that you were short DeSantis. Here we are, we're giving our actual award for the biggest political loser in 2023. Freeberg, I'll start with you. Who was your biggest political loser for 2023?

David Friedberg 10:45 My biggest political loser is the DEI movement.

Jason Calacanis 10:49 Oh.

David Friedberg 10:49 I heard f- obviously post-October 7th, the Hamas attacks on Israel, and then the following support for Hamas that came out of what have historically been groups that are aligned with DEI interests, and then the DEI-driven leaders of the universities that went in front of Congress to defend their freedom of speech rules around anti-Semitic protests caused a lot of folks that I know who are very liberal and very influential to wake up to the negative impacts of, uh, the DEI movement-

Jason Calacanis 11:27 Hmm.

David Friedberg 11:27 ... and its linkage to potentially anti-Semitism, which is masked in this oppressor-oppressed ideology that is the basis of a lot of these DEI protocols. And so I think it really shined a, a negative light on DEI this year in a way that hasn't been the case, uh, in a broader way with very influential people in a very long time. And so I think that that movement is gonna take a big hit and, uh, took a big hit at the end of this year and will, uh, continue to, I think, be questioned by donors and supporters of the ideologies of that movement.

Jason Calacanis 11:57 Okay. Sacks, who is your biggest loser in politics for 2023?

David Sacks 12:03 My biggest loser in politics for this year is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, and you can see this pretty clearly-

Jason Calacanis 12:08 (laughs)

David Sacks 12:08 ... by just looking at the cover of Time Magazine. He began the year-... fresh off of winning TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. And by the end of the year, the same author at TIME Magazine was writing a new cover story saying that Zelenskyy had become delusional, he had become messianic, he was ordering his troops on suicide missions, and his own inner circle had turned on him. And of course, who could forget that other photo from the middle of the year at Vilnius when all those Euro snobs turned their back on Zelenskyy? That was a brutal image that went viral on social media. Literally, the European elite turning their backs on a frustrated Zelenskyy. Sadly, Zelenskyy had the opportunity in April of 2022 to make peace, to sign a peace deal, and unfortunately, he took Boris Johnson and Bi- and Joe Biden's advice to pressure Putin rather than make peace. And I think that gamble has turned into a disaster for him.

Jason Calacanis 13:09 Chamath, your biggest political loser in 2023?

David Sacks 13:12 I had a different choice, but I think-

Jason Calacanis 13:15 Hmm. Game time change?

David Sacks 13:17 Yeah, hearing David has convinced me. I will, I will go with the death of the acronyms. It was, it was close for me between that and I actually think that Joe Biden unfortunately had a very difficult run of it in 2023 when you actually think about it. The Ukraine thing was a fiasco. All of this stuff around maybe putting the hand on the scale, whether it's on Elon or against Donald Trump, it's all just very messy, I think, for him. But I do think that Freiberg is right. This is probably the beginning of the end of the acronyms and if you look at ESG and DEI together, ESG is a little bit more measurable, but sustainable asset ownership and ESG ownership across the world shrank by 15%, which you may say, "Is that a big number or not?" That's $5 trillion. And so where the money goes typically, so goes everything else in modern society. And so when the money starts to scurry, I think that you can pretty much expect that people's patience and support of these kinds of movements are waning. I'll go with death of the acronyms are the biggest political loser.

Jason Calacanis 14:27 Got it. So you started, you were going to say Biden, but you changed it in real time and you went DEI, ESG acronyms.

David Sacks 14:32 Acronyms, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 14:33 Okay. Death of the acronyms. You know, I had a lot of talks with folks about this one. People had a lot of input. Some people said DeSantis, some people said Biden. I think the biggest 2023 loser in politics is the American people, who are now faced with a Biden-Trump rematch, both those individuals clearly being in different stages of decline, being over 80. And the GOP just can't quit Trump, and it seems like the Democrats can't quit Biden, despite 70%, 80% of the country not wanting the rematch. So I'm going to give the American people are the biggest political losers of 2023. All right.

Jason Calacanis 15:14 Here we go. Biggest political surprise. This is the biggest political surprise of 2023. Sax, what's your biggest political surprise?

David Sacks 15:23 Well, I think the biggest political surprise, and it was a very negative one, was the Hamas attack on Israel on the morning of October 7th, which really seemed to come out of nowhere. Only eight days before, Jake Sullivan, who is Biden's national security advisor, had declared that the Middle East had been quieter than it had been in two decades. And those words obviously proved, proved very all time, but he wasn't alone in thinking that. I think almost everybody was really surprised by this attack. I think until then, the Middle East seemed to be on a path of progress with the Abraham Accords being negotiated between Israel and several Gulf monarchies. And I think that October 7th has really changed the political paradigm, certainly in Israel, in the Middle East, and I think even in American politics.

Jason Calacanis 16:10 Hmm. Okay. Freiberg?

David Friedberg 16:13 A little bit of a nuanced take on that, but I said the rise of Hamas was the biggest political surprise. You know, Hamas is a self-proclaimed political party that was thrust to the center of geopolitics and domestic social issues across the West after October 7th, which was, I think probably a surprise to many that planned these attacks as well. Basically, it feels to me like Hamas is the pawn that crossed the chessboard and became a queen. It's an organization that, you know, had resourcing and was influenced by, you know, many have shown connections to Iran and, and other wealthy states and had very low attention levels prior to October 7th on a global basis, and post-October 7th now has recognition and sympathy and a great deal of interest in the, the root cause of their party. So, really incredible surprise. I don't think anyone could have predicted this at the start of the year, that not just the attacks happened, but the resulting shift in the discourse and influence, uh, that's happened.

Jason Calacanis 17:13 Chamath, biggest political surprise of 2023?

David Sacks 17:16 I'm gonna go with a domestic choice, and I think it's quite obvious, but the biggest political surprise is RF Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I don't think anybody would have predicted that he would both drop out of the Democratic Party, run as an independent, and essentially collect... He is, in terms of favorability in the polls, he's the leading 2024 candidate right now. It's incredible.

Jason Calacanis 17:45 People like him, that's for sure.

David Sacks 17:47 Incredible.

Jason Calacanis 17:48 And nobody would have predicted it.

David Sacks 17:49 That's a really good one.

Jason Calacanis 17:50 What do we think he will get if he runs as an independent, just percentage wise? Ross Perot as a third party candidate-

David Friedberg 17:57 Better than Perot.

Jason Calacanis 17:57 ... got 19%. You think better than 19%?

David Sacks 17:59 Because the, the, the country is much more fragmented today. There's a lot more protest votes today. There's just a lot of reasons where RFK can garner a lot of support and build a plurality among centrists. That wasn't possible th- when Perot was running, because when he ran-You have to, you have to remember, like, this, the country was in a very different place psychologically than it is right now.

Jason Calacanis 18:18 Yeah, I too had third party candidates as being my biggest surprise. I didn't give it to a specific one. I was debating these third party candidates against the GOP not being able to field a better option than Trump, but I think I'm gonna go again with third party candidates. But I'll include Dean Phillips in that breaking ranks. I'll include Vivek, just a very young, very smart individual, capturing people's imagination. Third party candidates, for me, is the biggest surprise. And, and I do think it could have a meaningful impact. If you're right that he gets over 19%, who does that, Chamath, in your mind, who does that benefit and who does it hurt if the candidates are Biden and Trump?

David Sacks 18:59 It hurts Biden the most.

Jason Calacanis 19:01 You believe that? Okay. What about you, Sax? Who do you think it hurts the most?

David Sacks 19:05 Unclear right now.

Jason Calacanis 19:06 Yeah.

David Sacks 19:06 I mean, I think on the issues, I can see a lot of populist voters wanting to go with RFK, but on the other hand, maybe he does peel away some Democratic Party voters, so I'm not sure to be honest.

Jason Calacanis 19:18 I've heard this before. Any, any thoughts, Friedberg, on that?

David Friedberg 19:21 What was the question?

Jason Calacanis 19:22 If RFK were to get, as Chamath thinks, more than Perot, so that's 20% or more, of the, uh, popular vote, who is that gonna harm and who's it gonna hurt, Trump or Biden?

David Friedberg 19:32 I saw a Gallup survey that showed that there's a real shot at more than 40% of Americans being interested in a third party.

Jason Calacanis 19:40 Hmm.

David Friedberg 19:41 And so, I, I, I'm sorry, I could be totally wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure I saw that and it really kind of resonated with me. And I think our discourse here and, you know, obviously conversations with our friend group, Nick might have something on this, support for third US political party up to 63%. This is the Gallup data. Yeah, so I was right. I think that this is one of the most kind of profound shifts in American politics, at least in our lifetimes, that the right has gone very right, the left has gone very left, and they've been so rooted in identity politics that you can't really see any of these issues kind of finding compromise and f- finding a way to lean across the aisle and get things done, and I think that's where a lot of people are just fed up.

Jason Calacanis 20:22 Hmm.

David Friedberg 20:22 So I would love to see a third political party emerge, and if RFK breaks the dam on this, it would be fantastic. It will take, as these things always do, a number of years for a group of independents to coalesce around what that third party looks like and how it's gonna be governed and so on, but this could be a really interesting shift in the dynamics of American politics. So pretty, pretty cool. I'm not into politics in the US that much, but pretty cool, I think, opportunity to reframe, you know, how do we wanna build America going forward? And thinking about using a new party as a way to do that.

Jason Calacanis 20:56 And we haven't even heard of, uh, No Labels, the third party platform. They're probably gonna announce Joe Manchin any day now, and so that could change things as well so that's a very interesting take.

David Sacks 21:07 The biggest problem that we have, this may sound really dumb but I think it's true, in launching a third party is a viable name.

Jason Calacanis 21:16 Hmm.

David Friedberg 21:17 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 21:19 I think it's the most important boundary condition to have a sustainable third party is a, is a good name.

Jason Calacanis 21:26 Like an iconic person.

David Friedberg 21:27 The Chairman's Party.

David Sacks 21:29 No, no, like, like whatever we call this party-

Jason Calacanis 21:30 Oh, the name of the party, not the person they field. Yeah.

David Sacks 21:32 Like No Labels is a terrible name.

Jason Calacanis 21:34 That's a terrible name.

David Friedberg 21:35 The Chairman's Party is perfect.

Jason Calacanis 21:36 Green Party, terrible. Got it.

David Friedberg 21:38 Green Party's terrible.

Jason Calacanis 21:39 Terrible.

David Friedberg 21:39 The Patriot Party, Freedom Party, they're all terrible because they all feel like they're rooted in some, you know, either conservative or liberal cause. There, there's gotta be some element of, like, what's the right decision on each, (laughs) on each topic, not necessarily, you know, how do we fight the identity politics? I think that's the key piece that's missing and...

Jason Calacanis 21:57 I like The Rational Party, like a party of rational individuals.

David Friedberg 22:01 Yeah, but that also feels disparaging to a degree, you know?

Jason Calacanis 22:03 Yeah.

David Friedberg 22:03 I don't know.

David Sacks 22:04 Branding s- branding's so important.

David Friedberg 22:04 Sax, what, what would you call it, the third party?

Jason Calacanis 22:07 Republicans.

David Sacks 22:08 People's Republic of... I don't know. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 22:11 Saxistan. (laughs)

David Friedberg 22:12 Chamath, do you have an idea for a name?

David Sacks 22:15 I'm not gonna comment on this facially

David Friedberg 22:17 Oh. Oh.

Jason Calacanis 22:18 Oh, Chamathy-poo, something brewing.

David Friedberg 22:21 JKL, do you, would you have a name for a third party? You like The Rational Party.

Jason Calacanis 22:25 I liked The Rational Party or something like that, where it kind of evoked, you know, people who are being thoughtful and were trying to make rational decisions in everybody's best interests, right? Something that was not about us versus them, abortion or, you know, DEI or ESG, just something focused more on getting things done. The, the, the Getting Things Done Party, something like that, Getting Things Done Party. GST.

David Sacks 22:51 It's a bit on the nose but better than The Derangement Party.

David Friedberg 22:54 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 22:54 Yeah, absolutely.

David Sacks 22:55 All right, let's keep going.

Jason Calacanis 22:56 Let's keep going. Here we go. (laughs)

David Friedberg 22:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 22:58 Oh, man. He's already trying to derail the show. I will not engage

Jason Calacanis 23:02 with Sax.

David Friedberg 23:02 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 23:02 All right, it's time for our biggest business winner, biggest winner in business. Who you got, Chamath? Who's your biggest winner in business?

David Sacks 23:12 I mean, I don't think this is even close but I think it's Elon Musk.

Jason Calacanis 23:16 Oh, yeah.

David Sacks 23:18 Three things obviously, three different companies, but the rebasing of Twitter actually had an even more profound impact, I think, on Silicon Valley than it necessarily did on Twitter. Second was I think SpaceX has really turned a corner. Starlink is really at scale. Starship looks like it's viable. And then the third is Tesla really consolidated its leadership in EVs and batteries and battery technology and FSD, so I think on the merits, it was not even close.

Jason Calacanis 23:54 Okay, Sax, who you got? Who's your biggest business winner?

David Sacks 23:57 The Magnificent Seven.

Jason Calacanis 23:59 Yeah. Of course.

David Sacks 23:59 These are the seven companies that accounted for almost all of the stock market gains this year. You can see it in this chart. There's about a 63% gap between the performance of the top names, top seven names in the S&P 500 and then the other 493 of them.I think that the S&P 493 had a 12% gain this year, which isn't bad, but it was dwarfed by the Microsoft 7, which was almost 80%.

24:28 Incredible.

Jason Calacanis 24:29 All right. Sachs says-

David Sacks 24:30 Good pick.

Jason Calacanis 24:30 ... the M7. Friedberg, who you got?

David Friedberg 24:33 Yeah, I'm gonna pick one of the seven, which is Microsoft, just a shot down the middle of the fairway here. Despite only seeing, I think, roughly 8% top line growth, the business saw its market cap grow by over a trillion dollars, 1.7 to 2.7 trillion this year. Just an incredible number. I mean, can you imagine if we ever said that 10 years ago, whether anyone would believe it? Consumer and enterprise strength and strategic strength, the fact that they were able to close the Activision ac- acquisition in a, the sort of regulatory environment, and then the strength that Satya showed and the, the speed at which he acted during the OpenAI weekend debacle, where he set up this whole thing where he got Sam on board and was going to retain all this value that he was extracting from OpenAI and partnership was, I, I think great leadership and cemented his, his position and standing as being a really thoughtful, fast-acting strategic leader for a business that's been around forever, but amazingly added a trillion of market cap in 12 months. So I, I just throw it to, to Microsoft this year. It's very hard to kind of break that business apart and say, "Here's all the things that are wrong with it." It's just, you know, it's just moving.

Jason Calacanis 25:36 All right. Very well done. We got Elon Musk and-

David Friedberg 25:38 Sachs, didn't you work, didn't you work there for a while?

Jason Calacanis 25:40 One year.

David Sacks 25:41 At, at Twitter, or-

David Friedberg 25:43 No, Microsoft.

Jason Calacanis 25:44 Microsoft.

David Sacks 25:44 Oh, Microsoft.

Jason Calacanis 25:45 One year. Did you work there for-

David Sacks 25:46 Well, I was actually ... No, I was locked up for two years in the wake of the Yammer deal. Yeah, I was a corporate vice president at Microsoft (laughs) .

David Friedberg 25:52 Did you like it?

David Sacks 25:53 Yeah, it was ... I mean, it's a high quality company for sure.

David Friedberg 25:55 Yeah.

David Sacks 25:56 I mean, I was, like, super active for one year because I was still in charge of ... I still had a PnL running Yammer, but then after one year, Yammer was sort of assimilated into the Borg and-

David Friedberg 26:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 26:07 ... I didn't have anything to do. I was kind of just, like, on call.

David Friedberg 26:10 Right, right.

Jason Calacanis 26:11 All right. I am gonna talk my own book on this one and give it to Dara and the team at Uber. They got into the S&P 500, became profitable, planning stock buybacks. They resolved a, almost all of the regulatory reso- issues, including getting the taxis in London to be on the app, which was their big adversary, and they were gonna get kicked out of London. If you remember, this is a company that five years ago the press and the fake news were saying could never be profitable and was gonna fail. And now it is the most successful new startup in the last cycle, bigger than everybody. And so congratulations to the team

Jason Calacanis 26:50 over there. All right. Biggest loser in business, the biggest loser. It's 2023. Friedberg, just so you know, last year your prediction was capital-intensive series BCs and Ds of growth companies. Well done on that prediction, but give me, Friedberg, your actual. Who was your biggest loser in 2023, oh sultan of science?

David Friedberg 27:11 It's sort of tied up. Obviously, there's a tale to the effect, but it's VCs who deployed most of their capital in 2021. Obviously, it was the year where, uh, venture capital deployments peaked! And what I've heard from institutional LPs this year is that, you know, not only will that vintage underperform, but it could torpedo as many as 50% of firms that are managing capital today in Silicon Valley, and it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to venture as an asset class significantly because of the torpedo that the 2021 vintage represents in performance. So that was my biggest loser for the year.

Jason Calacanis 27:53 Good for me and Sachs because we were diligent during that time. All right. Let's go to you, Sachs. Who's your biggest loser in business in 2023?

David Sacks 28:01 My biggest business loser is Disney.

Jason Calacanis 28:04 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 28:04 It seems that every aspect-

David Friedberg 28:06 That's a good one. That's a good one.

Jason Calacanis 28:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 28:07 ... of Disney's business (censored) the bed in 2023.

David Friedberg 28:09 (laughs) .

David Sacks 28:11 I mean, all their major theatrical releases flopped amidst a conservative backlash against its woke social stances. You may recall that the actress who played Snow White in the remake accused Prince Charming of being a stalker.

Jason Calacanis 28:24 (laughs)

David Sacks 28:25 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 28:25 I mean, there's a million examples (laughs) .

David Sacks 28:26 Even their, their Marvel franchise suddenly had bombs. They had to fire Jonathan Majors, who was doing a fantastic job playing Kang in an entire franchise arc. They're gonna have to reset now because of a criminal conviction involving him. Disney+ subscriptions fell off a cliff. Even attendance at its theme parks declined dramatically because they charge way too much for families to visit. And then finally, Bob Iger picked a fight with Elon Musk over advertising. Remember Elon probably-

Jason Calacanis 28:54 Yup.

David Sacks 28:54 ... told Iger to GFY.

Jason Calacanis 28:57 Good for you.

David Sacks 28:57 And ... Yup. And tens of thousands of Disney+ subscribers canceled their subscriptions because of that. And it all makes you wonder if Iger now wishes he had stayed retired.

Jason Calacanis 29:07 I, too, picked Disney.

David Sacks 29:09 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 29:09 I put Disney and Warner Brothers.

David Sacks 29:10 (laughs) .

Jason Calacanis 29:11 Uh, both of them had their comic book franchises collapse simultaneously. On the, on the Warner Brothers side and the DC side, The Flash and Justice League, everything came apart. Streaming was too expensive, and you didn't mention these, uh, horrific strikes that they had to deal with, and it feels like they had to give a ton of concessions. So Disney was my biggest loser as well with Warner Brothers, as their little brother there. Chamath, we have a consensus there, rare consensus between Sachs and I. Who did, who did you have for your biggest loser in business?

David Sacks 29:40 Well, you, you guys partially win-

Jason Calacanis 29:43 Okay.

David Sacks 29:43 ... because I'm gonna have to agree with you guys, but I think the biggest loser in business was the go woke community who tried to synthetically and artificially use all these social movements as a way to drive revenue and just got totally burned, so Disney, Bud, Target. And I think the statement from consumers is, "Look, just sell a product, stay in your lane, make a better and better product for us at lower and lower prices, and otherwise, just let the politicians and the voters decide social issues." And I think-

Jason Calacanis 30:22 There you go.

David Sacks 30:23 ... that was pretty clear.

Jason Calacanis 30:24 All right, there you have it, folks. If you're gonna make Bud Light, (laughs) people just wanna drink the damn beer. They're not interested in your politics.

Jason Calacanis 30:32 All right, here we go. Biggest business surprise of 2023. Who do you got, Sax? Who was your biggest business surprise of 2023?

David Sacks 30:41 I think it was the Fed's Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP, in response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the regional banking crisis.

Jason Calacanis 30:51 Hmm.

David Sacks 30:51 As you may recall, it wasn't just SVB, there were several dominoes in the regional banking system that fell. It was SVB, Signature, First Republic, and even in Europe, Credit Suisse basically fell apart, all because of the sudden spike in interest rates. A lot of people tried to blame VCs for this, J-Cal.

Jason Calacanis 31:10 Yeah, I remember.

David Sacks 31:11 Even you and me took, took some heat.

Jason Calacanis 31:13 Yeah.

David Sacks 31:13 Uh, the truth is that if the dominoes had fallen in a slightly different order, no one would have thought to blame VCs for this. It was obviously the fact that rates had spiked up and these banks got caught offsides, because their deposit base is volatile, and they had loaded up on government bonds at a 1% interest, and then the value of those bonds plummeted. The Fed then stepped in to prevent this from turning into a contagion. That was where the BTFP came in, and I'm ambivalent about it because I think that we don't know the long-term consequences of the Fed basically providing this liquidity to the banking system. However, it's very clear to me that there was a regional banking crisis underway and the Fed stepping in, I think, probably saved us from having a recession this year.

Jason Calacanis 32:01 Amazing. So the Fed there. I picked Facebook for my biggest surprise this year. They changed the name of the company two years ago (laughs) to Meta, they were pouring tens of billions of dollars into VR which nobody wanted to use, the CEO was focused on the wrong thing, but they turned it around. The stock dropped to 90 and Zuckerberg, I guess, didn't want to lose, and so he laid off tens of thousands of employees, said every- no more middle managers, everybody's got to get to work, and they doubled down on their existing businesses and they've made some great progress on AI. So my biggest business surprise was the resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook. Chamath, who did you have for your biggest business surprise?

David Sacks 32:44 I'll pick Jay Powell and the Fed capitulation. I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for longer for quite a while now, and I was really surprised when Jay Powell had this press conference in December, in early December, and just basically capitulated and just said, "You know what, guys? We're gonna be cutting probably three times next year." That was effectively the gist of what he said and immediately the 10-year basically just completely changed course and it went from almost at 5% to below 4% within a matter of two and a half or three weeks. So... And then the stock market has basically done nothing but go straight up.

Jason Calacanis 33:29 Hmm.

David Sacks 33:29 That's a huge surprise to me because I think now what the setup is for 2024 is basically we will melt up, up until the first cut, and then there'll probably be some real selling. And I, I would not have predicted that. The markets have become a lot more accommodative as a result. I didn't expect that. So Jay Powell really, I think, surprised a lot of us. He could have been more tempered, but he d- essentially decided to give away the playbook in the last month of the year here.

Jason Calacanis 34:02 And it's important for everybody to understand, the Fed acts independently of the administration. It's just a coincidence, correct, Sax, that their cuts are gonna come just in time for Biden economics?

David Sacks 34:13 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 34:14 And if it happens to go up in the next nine months, that has nothing to do with the Biden administration, who might benefit from that if the economy goes back.

David Sacks 34:20 By the way, Jason-

Jason Calacanis 34:21 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 34:21 Jason, Nick, I haven't... I have a quote that I sent Nick. This is, uh, this was what Larry Summers said, and I just think it's such an unbelievable quote that is just worth internalizing if you just start reading here. So, "I prefer the Volcker/Greenspan approach, which is to recognize that the Fed is a little bit like the Delphic oracles. People regarded them as omniscient and omnipotent, but they were in fact neither. So the oracles kept their pronouncements vague and oracular, not concrete and specific, because it was impossible to be concrete and specific without being wrong frequently and undercutting (laughs) credibility."

Jason Calacanis 34:57 Sure.

David Sacks 34:57 I mean, that is just a perfect-

Jason Calacanis 34:58 Keep it general, yeah. Keep it general.

David Sacks 34:59 ...summary of what probably should have happened in these pressures, and this was an example where it was the exact opposite and the market just took it and said, "I'm off to the races."

35:10 Just to, uh, uh, agree with that and buttress it, it's not only the fact that they gave this guidance this year. As you remember, back when we started having inflation, the Feds still stuck to the story that it would not be raising rates for some extended period of time, and a lot of these banks that had problems basically because they bought too many long-term government bonds, a lot of those bonds were bought during that period when the Fed was assuring them it wasn't gonna be jacking up rates.

35:37 Mm-hmm.

35:38 So if the Fed hadn't misled them, maybe they would have made better risk decisions.

Jason Calacanis 35:42 Yeah.

David Sacks 35:43 So it works both ways.

Jason Calacanis 35:44 Freeberg, got a business surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the Bestie Awards?

David Friedberg 35:49 The biggest surprise was Sam Altman's ouster and return all in a weekend, so-

Jason Calacanis 35:52 (laughs)

David Friedberg 35:52 ... that was kind of crazy, so I just give it to that. Nothing else to be said.

Jason Calacanis 35:55 Okay, the flip-flop. Love it.

Jason Calacanis 35:57 Okay.

David Friedberg 35:57 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 35:57 Best science breakthrough. This is everybody's favorite, also the time when Sax goes and takes a leak. 2023, biggest science breakthrough?

David Sacks 36:04 I've got one.

36:05 I've got one too.

Jason Calacanis 36:05 You've got one? Sax, you're awake during the Sax-

David Sacks 36:08 I've got one.

Jason Calacanis 36:08 ... segment? Go ahead.

David Sacks 36:09 Yeah, so-

Jason Calacanis 36:09 What's the biggest science breakthrough for you, Sax?

David Sacks 36:10 Well, a- according to NASA, there's a new look at Uranus.

36:13 (laughs)

David Friedberg 36:14 (laughs)

David Sacks 36:14 That's right, J-Cal.

Jason Calacanis 36:15 Ah! Gotcha.

David Sacks 36:16 That's right, J-Cal. These are never-before-seen-

36:20 Never-before-seen. (laughs)

36:20 ... deep, penetrating shots of Uranus.

36:24 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 36:24 How deep and penetrating are these-

David Sacks 36:25 Very deep, very penetrating.

Jason Calacanis 36:27 (laughs) .

David Sacks 36:27 From the James Webb Space Telescope.

Jason Calacanis 36:29 Wow.Freeberg, when your anus gets probed this deeply-

David Friedberg 36:34 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 36:34 ... what's your takeaway? What, what's the feeling you get in this deep probing of your anus?

David Friedberg 36:40 Awe, wonder, mystery.

Jason Calacanis 36:42 Awe and wonder?

David Friedberg 36:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 36:44 Well, I-

David Sacks 36:44 It's a space colonoscopy.

David Friedberg 36:46 Something gets moved within.

Jason Calacanis 36:48 Absolutely. I'm going to save you for last, Freeberg. Chamath, you have one?

David Sacks 36:51 Yeah. I think that this unfortunately did not get nearly the attention it deserves, but I'm gonna pick the CRISPR, FDA-approved CRISPR treatment of sickle cell anemia. I think that this is just an incredibly important breakthrough. And so, you know, sickle cell basically is just a condition where the shape of your red blood cells change. It causes a lot of very painful inflammation and damage, disproportionately affects the Black population, African American population. And so now there's an approved therapy which goes in and makes the gene edits and fixes these folks. So, congratulations to Vertex and CRISPR. And I, I think it's just incredible.

Jason Calacanis 37:28 There was, uh, my big breakthrough was this brain decoder technology. We didn't talk about it here on the show, but this project was crazy. They, they did MRI scans or fMRI scans of blood flow to different areas in the brain. They then had people listen to podcasts, like The Moth, and they tracked individuals' brain activity with specific words that were said during the podcast. Then they had them repeat words. Then they attached it to a language model, GPT-1 I believe, and narrowed down what people were thinking. Then they had people think thoughts (laughs) and it started to use the predictive model of GPT-1 and combined it with what was happening in their brain chemistry. Now this is a far way from being able to read people's minds, but for somebody who couldn't speak, let's say, the idea that you could think and then have your thoughts and the story you were telling actually come out of a computer just by thinking would be miraculous. Obviously Neuralink does this with a direct connection, but fascinating work being done here.

David Friedberg 38:28 What is Sacks thinking right now?

Jason Calacanis 38:30 Sacks is still thinking about your anus. (laughs) He's, he's going deep into your anus right now.

David Sacks 38:33 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 38:33 He's reading that paper. I can see it, uh, in his eyes.

David Sacks 38:35 You guys know I got a colonoscopy?

Jason Calacanis 38:38 Thank goodness. How was it?

David Sacks 38:39 I got, I got it on, um-

Jason Calacanis 38:40 Did they put you under?

David Sacks 38:41 ... Tuesday. Yeah, but I got ... I didn't get the propofol. I got Demerol, I think. Demerol?

Jason Calacanis 38:46 Uh, you gotta go probe.

David Sacks 38:47 I had, like, the Twilight sedation. So it's kind of like, you know... It was great, don't get me wrong, but it was, like, 15, 20 minutes. Like, it was not-

Jason Calacanis 38:55 But you were kind of awake and lucid while they were-

David Sacks 38:58 No, I woke up, like, halfway through. Yeah.

39:00 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 39:00 You woke up halfway through?

David Sacks 39:01 Yeah.

39:01 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 39:02 Huh. Did they give you a drink, a little red wine or anything? Nothing?

David Sacks 39:05 No.

Jason Calacanis 39:06 No foreplay?

David Sacks 39:06 No, they didn't talk to me. No.

Jason Calacanis 39:07 (laughs)

David Sacks 39:07 I, I just saw the, I saw the screen. I was like, "What the F?" And then I just went back to sleep. (laughs)

39:12 (laughs)

David Friedberg 39:12 After four hours.

Jason Calacanis 39:13 Let me tell you, propofol, it's drip, drip, drip, and then you wake up four hours later. It's the most restful sleep you ever had.

David Friedberg 39:19 Four hours?

Jason Calacanis 39:19 That's the way to go.

David Sacks 39:20 No, dude. I had a 15 ... No, I only had Twilight sedation.

Jason Calacanis 39:22 No, it wasn't four hours. It was 90 minutes maybe.

David Friedberg 39:23 It's an hour, yeah.

David Sacks 39:24 Yeah. I, I had, like, a 20-minute Twilight sedation. That was it.

Jason Calacanis 39:27 I asked them to go back up in there twice just to make sure. Freeberg, enough about your anus. What was your biggest science surprise of '23? I know it's hard to surprise you.

David Friedberg 39:37 I know you guys want to hear some crazy specific thing, but I, I actually just said that there were too many breakthroughs with machine learned models, with AI this year to list, LLMs that can run on small desktop machines, that are open source, that outperform all models that were in existence even a few months prior. It highlights the leaps and bounds of this trajectory of, of development and models. And there's other specific examples, like we talked about DeepMind's GraphCast model, which is a, a graph neural network on the show, and obviously all the generative models in imagery and movies and music. But it's just such an extraordinary time to see us leverage our combined capabilities to drive these extraordinary gains.

Jason Calacanis 40:18 So your surprise is the pace of language models and the pace of AI development?

David Friedberg 40:22 Just all these breakthroughs in aggregate. I mean, I, I, I, I think it's-

Jason Calacanis 40:25 Okay, great.

David Friedberg 40:25 ... it's hard, it's hard to pay attention to any one. There's a constellation of change underway. It's incredible. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 40:29 Hmm. Okay.

Jason Calacanis 40:30 Now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan. Who is your biggest flash in the pan, Chamath?

David Sacks 40:36 Oh my gosh, this is, um ... Well, I'll, I'll tell you what I-

Jason Calacanis 40:40 It could be tech, it could be business, it could be society, it could be pop culture.

David Sacks 40:43 I wrote down SBF.

Jason Calacanis 40:45 Okay.

David Sacks 40:46 I think, like, from what looked like a too-good-to-be wunderkind, frankly just turned out to be an Adderall-addicted grifter. (laughs)

David Friedberg 40:55 (laughs)

David Sacks 40:55 Even had great user accounts.

Jason Calacanis 40:58 Sacks, I hope that doesn't hit too close to home. Who was yours?

David Sacks 41:02 Same ballpark. I said effective altruism.

Jason Calacanis 41:04 (laughs) Well done.

David Sacks 41:04 The EA movement took a big hit with SBF.

Jason Calacanis 41:08 Yep.

David Sacks 41:08 I would have thought that'd be enough to polish it off, but then we had the OpenAI board oust Sam Altman, like we talked about.

Jason Calacanis 41:17 Yeah.

David Sacks 41:17 Apparently that was driven by a couple of their nonprofit board members who were effective altruists. I think the failure of that whole debacle will put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement.

Jason Calacanis 41:30 Okay. Freeberg, you got a flash in the pan for 2023.

David Friedberg 41:33 It was the obvious breakthrough in superconducting room temperature material, LK-99.

Jason Calacanis 41:39 Yeah.

David Friedberg 41:39 It came and it went. Everyone thought it was going to change the world. A couple weeks later, it couldn't be replicated. It was disproven ultimately. And for a hot minute there, everyone thought the world was gonna change. So it was super exciting to see room temperature superconductivity and the search for room temperature superconducting materials get so much attention. As I mentioned, it's something I've thought a lot about since I was 13 years old. (laughs) So it's super cool, but didn't happen. Came and it went.

Jason Calacanis 42:05 I went with a wild card here. I said George Santos, the diva drama queen and congressman who slayed from 2023 to 2023.

David Friedberg 42:14 (laughs)

David Sacks 42:15 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 42:16 And used, and used his election campaign funds to buy designer clothes-

David Friedberg 42:20 That's good. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 42:20 ... and get botox. So, yes, queen.

David Friedberg 42:23 And Sephora.

Jason Calacanis 42:24 And Sephora.

David Sacks 42:24 Not bad. Not bad.

Jason Calacanis 42:25 Yes, queen. Just making bank over at Cameo. Gonna have him come in. He's gonna do a, uh, he's gonna do a quick, uh, cameo here on All-In Podcast.

Jason Calacanis 42:34 All right, best CEO. Your best CEO.... best CEO. I'll go first, I'll go first. I haven't gone first yet. I picked a wild card here. I went Taylor Swift. $4 billion in revenue from, uh, the tour and the merchandise and the movie and everything. Each tour stop generates $90 million for the city she lands in. She's getting 85%. She went direct to movie theaters with that concert movie and made a quarter billion dollars. She's hands down the best CEO of 2023 for me. Who have you got, Chamath?

David Sacks 43:07 Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. I just think the gross tonnage of market cap dollars he added in 2023, plus figuring out how to close Activision, plus retaining maximum optionality with OpenAI, is just a master class in heads down management.

Jason Calacanis 43:30 Well done. Sacks, who do you got?

David Sacks 43:33 I have Jensen Huang, uh, CEO of NVIDIA-

Jason Calacanis 43:36 Sure.

David Sacks 43:36 ... and king of the GPU. We talked about the Magnificent Seven, but none was more magnificent than NVIDIA, whose stock is up 235%, and earnings and forecasts keep blowing doors off. Jensen has been planning this moment for many years before the whole AI frenzy took hold, and NVIDIA's now reaping the benefit of that.

Jason Calacanis 43:57 Who do you got, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 43:59 I give it to Sam Altman because I don't think any individual has generated more attention on a private company and its effect on the world and the future than Sam Altman and OpenAI, and I think that he's been aggressive in raising capital. This guy can raise like he can raise, and then he over-bets on people. He, he finds talent, he gives them extraordinary comp packages, gets them to come and work on this, this e- extraordinary effort, and then gets them to deliver results. He pushes the limits, he pushes the boundaries, even beyond what's comfortable for his board members (laughs) . Clearly, their, th- you know, their, it comes with the good and the bad, and then even after he got ousted by his board, his entire employee base threw a coup and got him back. And sure, everyone's got their economic motivations to see that happen, but I still think that the setup was, you know, largely his, his work, so he does deserve credit for that. So all in, I think it's, it's an incredible year for Sam Altman.

Jason Calacanis 44:53 Now we move on to 2023 best investor. Chamath, who was your best investor for 2023 here at the Bestie Awards?

David Sacks 45:01 It was a continuation of the last couple of years, but it's the pot shops and specifically Citadel, so I give that award to Ken Griffin. You know, pot shops, I think, have really become the hallway bully of the public capital markets, and Citadel is the kingpin. They returned $7 billion to their investors in '23. I think if you go back since 2020, they've returned more than 20 billion. They generated, you know, 15% very steady returns uncorrelated to the market. It's just a machine. I mean, it's incred- it's an incredible business that he's built. So he is... There's nobody close.

Jason Calacanis 45:42 Sacks, who do you got?

David Sacks 45:43 I've got Bill Ackman here for timing the bond market perfectly. He shorted bonds for most of the year, making hundreds of millions of dollars, and then on October 23rd, he announced that he was covering his positions and that it was too risky to stay short in bonds, and he was going long, and that very day was the high point of the 10-year bond yield. The market made a bottom on October 27th. Since then, yields have plummeted, which means that the value of bonds has soared, and the best part of it is that Ackman is using his new FU money to take on Ivy League university presidents for their woke-

Jason Calacanis 46:16 (laughs)

David Sacks 46:16 (laughs)

46:16 ... DEI double standards, grifting, and plagiarism.

Jason Calacanis 46:19 Well done. All right.

David Sacks 46:20 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 46:20 Friedberg, who you got?

David Friedberg 46:21 I also said Ackman for his timing on the, the, the Treasury trade.

Jason Calacanis 46:25 I was right there with you guys, except I wanted to go with a wild card. I am astounded by the growth of TikTok, but I just worked backwards. Arthur Danczyk, who I've never met, from Susquehanna, uh, International Group, referred to as SIG in the industry, still owns, according to sources, 15% of this company, which could be worth three, four, $500 billion when it goes out, and despite all the saber rattling, the CCP has not divested from it, even though Trump and Biden both said they were gonna try to do that, and ByteDance was caught (laughs) spying on American journalists using their TikTok data. So, the fact that that investment is still in place, to me, is extraordinary. So congratulations to them. But I had to sell it quick.

Jason Calacanis 47:07 All right, now we move on. We're moving quickly here. 2023, best turnaround. Who's your best turnaround, Chamath?

David Sacks 47:13 This was, like, three years in the making, but I'll give it to Novo Nordisk. I think the amount of attention that Novo has gotten for Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus in 2023 was incredible.

Jason Calacanis 47:25 Hmm.

David Sacks 47:26 But you have to go back to the last decade where the first five years, there was just not much activity, and they had to maintain their investment, stay strong, stay focused, and then starting in about 2019, the stock has been about a four or five X in the last four or five years, and I think these semaglutide, GLP-1s are here to stay. They're transformational on society, so that was an enormous task of corporate focus, so I'll give the turnaround award to Novo Nordisk.

Jason Calacanis 47:59 Sacks, who do you got?

David Sacks 48:00 In light of what's happening right now in the crypto markets, I'm gonna go with Solana.

Jason Calacanis 48:05 Oh (laughs) !

David Friedberg 48:06 Oh, wow.

Jason Calacanis 48:07 Ho-ho-ho-ho! (laughs)

David Friedberg 48:09 Wow.

David Sacks 48:10 It began the year at about $9 a token. It's now at 92 as of this moment. Obviously, it's very volatile, but it's up roughly 10 X this year to date, and in light of the fact that various unscrupulous actors on the internet accuse some of us of, of buying Solana at a discount and dumping it on retail without any evidence, and that wasn't true, let's just say that those of us who are still holding bags of Solana are very happy campers right now.

David Friedberg 48:37 Oh.

Jason Calacanis 48:38 (laughs)

David Friedberg 48:40 Bag holder. Bag holder for the win.

Jason Calacanis 48:42 ... F the bids. (laughs) Friedberg, who do you got? Biggest business turnaround.

David Friedberg 48:47 I give it to Dara and Uber. When he took over that business, I think it was a $8 to $9 billion net loss in 2019. $5 billion EBITDA run rate right now, incredible forecasting, incredible skill in forecasting the sensitivities in that business, by the way.

Jason Calacanis 49:02 Say more, say more.

David Friedberg 49:04 And, you know, obviously seeing the market cap just this year grow from $50 billion to $126 billion as of today. So give it to Dara for the big turnaround. Product sucks though, I will say. It's gotten expensive, hard to get an Uber, sit around and wait forever. So Dara, please fix that (censored) . Otherwise, uh, good job.

Jason Calacanis 49:21 (laughs) Well done. I went with, uh, one that you guys gave awards to in, on all the previous awards. Sam Altman is all over this year's besties. I, I thought going from being fired for malfeasance to becoming a martyr and then "I'm the captain now," you can throw in the "I'm the captain now" meme right here, (laughs) Nick, for the pod. In about 10 days, he captured three full news cycles, was named CEO of the Year, and the palace intrigue, raising money for an NVIDIA killer in the Middle East. I mean, this guy is like James Bond plus a CEO. So what a great turnaround. From fired to desired, Sam Altman. All right. Let's go to our next one here. 2023,

Jason Calacanis 50:04 the worst company of the year. This is the company that is loathsome and horrible in our opinions. And it's, that's all it is folks. It's just four dudes' opinions. Sacks, in your opinion, what was the worst company of 2023?

David Sacks 50:20 I'm gonna go with Pfizer. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an expose on the inner turmoil at Pfizer as its market cap has lost $140 billion in valuation in 2023. By the way, that headline is ridiculous. Pfizer did not save the world. The reason why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for Paxlovid and for COVID boosters. Apparently people do not see the value in those products. They finally figured it out. I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines. The CEO Albert Bourla was confronted in Davos by citizen journalists for this lack of transparency back in January of this year, and what's interesting is that if you read the Wall Street Journal piece, even his own employees are questioning Bourla's candor when he announced on a company-wide virtual town hall that the company was embarking on a cost-cutting effort. The chat room erupted in snark. Quote, "Future is bright, but you might get fired," is how one employee characterized Bourla's spin. This led another employee to reply, quote, "Dumpster fires are always bright."

Jason Calacanis 51:37 All right. Friedberg, worst company of 2023 for you? Do you have a worst company ?

David Friedberg 51:42 I do. I'm gonna get through this without getting interrupted. The worst company of 2023 is Mu Yuan Foodstuff. This company is pure evil. It's got 137,000 employees, it's based in China. It's the world's largest slaughterer of pigs. It slaughters 2.1 million pigs per year, with the world's largest pig farm near Nanyang, where they basically take pigs from birth and breed them all the way through to slaughter. During their entire lives these pigs never get to move more than a few inches. They live in these multi-story housing units that they never get to see sun or the light from the outside. Through their whole lives they're kept separate from their families. Pigs are as smart as most dogs and even young children. And at the end of their very painful, awful existences they're slaughtered and fed to a growing population. China consumes over a billion pigs a year. It's a horrific situation. So...

David Sacks 52:38 (laughs)

David Friedberg 52:40 That's the most loathsome company of 2023.

52:43 Sounds delicious. (laughs)

52:46 I'm sorry, guys. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 52:48 Dude.

David Friedberg 52:50 You went off camera.

Jason Calacanis 52:50 That's not cool, man.

David Friedberg 52:51 You, you, you were went off camera. (censored) you Jacob.

Jason Calacanis 52:54 No, you- you started laughing. It's not a funny thing.

David Friedberg 52:57 I saw you laughing, that's why I started laughing.

Jason Calacanis 52:59 I mean, I had 15 jokes, but I'm not gonna make any of them. Uh, yeah, but none of us are for factory farming. It's, it's horrible. Who is your worst company, Chamath? Come on, Chamath, get in the game here. Who is your worst company?

David Friedberg 53:10 It's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank.

Jason Calacanis 53:13 Mm.

David Friedberg 53:14 One stole customer accounts and the other one just was run by a CEO and a risk management infrastructure that really imperiled an, almost imperiled an entire industry.

Jason Calacanis 53:24 There you go. For me, it was Fox News. They deceived their loyal customers by knowingly spreading fake news about voting machines. They wound up firing their most loved host and our fifth bestie, Tucker Carlson, and they paid record-setting fines for misleading the public and creating massive division in our country, and they're facing an even bigger lawsuit, a $2.7 billion lawsuit, with another election technology company that will happen in 2025. Pension funds are now suing this loathsome company because they lost so much money for them. So my worst company of the year is Fox News. All right. Sacks, you have something to say? I'm sorry. I saw you going for the microphone there.

David Sacks 54:09 I'm not gonna defend Fox after they fired Tucker.

Jason Calacanis 54:11 Exactly, exactly. And that's why I put it in there for you.

David Sacks 54:14 I do think the judgments, or the magnitude of the judgments, are ridiculous.

Jason Calacanis 54:17 Hmm. Okay. Now it's time. We're gonna have a little

Jason Calacanis 54:21 bit of fun here. Best meme. Your best meme. Fun stuff. I'll start it off this year. I loves the Boston cop on the slide. I don't know if you guys have seen this one, but it went super viral. They've made millions of versions of it. This is the cop in Boston going down a slide.

David Friedberg 54:41 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 54:43 And the backstory here...... bunch of cops were told there's a slide that's too dangerous in Boston. One of them tried to do their duty and confirm (laughs) that it was in fact dangerous, and he got injured coming down the slide. And now anytime-

David Sacks 54:55 Jesus.

Jason Calacanis 54:55 ... something is going off (laughs) the track, whether it's a market-

David Sacks 54:59 Wow.

Jason Calacanis 54:59 ... or a company, you play that clip. Sachs, you're a master of memes. What do you got for us this year in the 2023 Bestie Awards?

David Sacks 55:08 Well, I, I think the meme of the year had to be the GFY. Uh, Elon's-

Jason Calacanis 55:12 Good for you.

David Sacks 55:12 ... answer to Bob Iger's attempt to blackmail him. Nick, can ... But we need to see this in the GIF version. The way the hand motions are, it's this, then this, and then it comes back in.

Jason Calacanis 55:24 Good for you.

David Sacks 55:25 It's like a conductor of an orchestra, so ... (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 55:27 It's just a standard good for you. Chamath, did you have a f- (laughs)

David Sacks 55:31 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 55:31 Did you have a favorite ... Chamath, a favorite meme of 2023?

David Sacks 55:33 Yeah. Nick, if you wanna just throw it up there.

55:36 (laughs)

55:38 I'm a journalist, and it's the, uh, kid (laughs) Ha ha. Ha ha.

Jason Calacanis 55:42 No, he said, "I'm in journalism."

David Sacks 55:44 (laughs) I'm a journalist. What, what is this talking about? I think it's w- it's what we all know.

Jason Calacanis 55:49 Hmm.

David Sacks 55:49 And I think it was further exposed this year, just the, the brazen, naked ambition and corrupt nature of the mainstream media. Uh, Jason, you said it really well, and I f- and it really made an impact on me, so I wanna give you credit. We are all citizen journalists, investigative journalists now. And I think that that's true. I think we all have a responsibility to pick the information source and to vet it.

Jason Calacanis 56:15 Yeah. Yeah, it's a-

David Sacks 56:16 That's never been more true than this year.

Jason Calacanis 56:18 You gotta have multiple sources triangulate the truth for yourself. But yeah, I wouldn't trust the mainstream media at this point, you know, as but one of many sources. Friedberg, you got a favorite meme? You got a favorite meme?

David Friedberg 56:32 No, I didn't put anything on this.

Jason Calacanis 56:34 Okay.

David Friedberg 56:34 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 56:34 You gave us six minutes on pigs being killed, but you can't come up with one meme. Okay.

David Sacks 56:38 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 56:38 (laughs) Can't come up with a meme. Come on, man.

David Sacks 56:41 I think it's kinda funny actually.

Jason Calacanis 56:43 It's kinda funny?

David Sacks 56:44 Because l- not, not-

Jason Calacanis 56:44 (laughs) He has no memes. (laughs) He's memeless?

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:47 Wah. Wah. Wah.

Jason Calacanis 56:47 Wah. Wah.

David Sacks 56:47 Wait, we need to play the wah-wah music.

Chamath Palihapitiya 56:50 Wah. Wah.

Jason Calacanis 56:52 All right.

David Sacks 56:52 (laughs)

56:52 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 56:52 (laughs) All right. Best

Jason Calacanis 56:53 new tech. Best new tech. We gotta keep things moving. Last year, it was, uh, Fusion and GPT across the board. F- this year, I'll just get mine out of the way real quick. I'm gonna go with something more specific. ChatGPT's app has been extraordinary. It now has 4.0 in it. It has DALL-E in it. I've been making incredible images to go with my, uh, my Substack and my blog posts that I would have paid thousands of dollars, e- you know, for each one of those when I was doing magazines and they have voice chat. If you haven't connected ChatGPT's voice app to the new Action button on the iPhone 15, there's a button above your volume called Action. You can map it to a specific feature inside of any app. I mapped it to voice chat on ChatGPT. When I'm driving with my kids, they have a question, we put it in, and we just start asking questions about history, science, whatever it happens to be, pop culture music, to ChatGPT for. And it is an extraordinary breakthrough app. And it's, you know, been downloaded I think hundreds of millions of times now or over 100 million. Incredible, incredible progress there. Chamath, you have a best tech? Best new tech?

David Sacks 57:59 I don't think there was anything meaningful in 2023. I think there was a lot of improvements to things that were founded and started in 2020-

Jason Calacanis 58:06 Sure.

David Sacks 58:07 ... or 2021 or 2022. Nothing new that caught my eye this year.

Jason Calacanis 58:10 Sachs.

David Sacks 58:12 I have Starlink for Jet Suite X. Uh, I, of course, I've never used it, but I heard it's great. (laughs)

58:18 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 58:18 (laughs)

David Sacks 58:18 (laughs) Of course, it's great. Yeah, yeah, it is. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 58:20 But if you do fly with other humans who you don't know-

David Sacks 58:23 I-

Jason Calacanis 58:23 ... you would be impressed.

David Sacks 58:24 ... I am looking forward to, uh, Starlink for private aviation as well. But I've heard it's a real game changer on commercial flights and every kind of flight.

Jason Calacanis 58:32 Friedberg, best new tech?

David Friedberg 58:35 My best new tech of this year, I think, is really important as we race to keep the promise of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation, which is open source, locally run LLMs. So you can take a, an LLM-

David Sacks 58:54 Uh-huh.

David Friedberg 58:54 ... and you can run it on your machine. You don't have to be connected to the internet. You don't have to have a third-party service provider making a LLM available to you. And so this allows the continued development and pursuit of productivity gains and new capabilities that emerge from these LLMs by making them local, offline, disconnected from the internet, and, and away from the scrutability of agencies that wanna check your model and make sure it's okay. So, this is really important to me. I do think, like, my broader trend right now is, I think that there's this really scary big shift of you're either gonna end up in a new enlightenment or you're gonna end up in a new dark ages. And I think we're seeing this play out in all these conflicts around the world, in all of this regulation, in all of the, the technology that's being deemed either a threat or an opportunity. And so I, I think any technology capability that allows us to pursue the enlightenment is a winner for me. So anyway, this was a big shift that happened this year. And there's multiple models that are publicly available that are free, open source, that you can run.

Jason Calacanis 59:57 Okay. 2023 best trend. Chamath, what was the best trend of 2023 for you?

David Sacks 1:00:03 I actually, uh, didn't really ... couldn't figure one out.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:06 Okay. Sachs, do you got a best trend for 2023? Something that happened often, it became a trend.

David Sacks 1:00:12 My best trend is the return of colorblindness as the standard-

Jason Calacanis 1:00:16 Mm.

David Sacks 1:00:16 ... and the pushback on DEI. We already talked about the university presidents and what Bill Ackman is doing. I would add to that that the Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action in university admissions in June. And red state governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis took that as a green light to shut down DEI programs in their public colleges and universities. I think that this is a good trend, and hopefully it continues next year because America should be a colorblind meritocracy.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:45 Friedberg, what was your best trend of 2023?

David Friedberg 1:00:49 The profitability focus at young companies, particularly in an age of AI, uh, co-pilot tools for software development, from what I've seen, it's pretty incredible in single person efforts can yield what historically has required six, 12 or more people to do using co-pilot tools and AI. So software development is accelerated, new products and entire companies can be built by a single individual at very low cost, building totally customized software. So from what I've seen, it's not widely adopted, these, these capabilities, as you guys probably have seen as well, it's starting to be. But just imagine once the majority of people are using these co-piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools, it's really gonna increase productivity globally as it finds its way into every business and everyone can become an entrepreneur and so on. So it's good. It's incredible to see.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:40 I, too ... Sachs was looking at the issue of DEI, and I framed mine as DEI dying and meritocracy thriving. That was the best trend for me. So we are, once again, simpatico, you and I. DEI dying-

David Sacks 1:01:53 Nice.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:53 ... and meritocracy thriving. Nicely done.

David Sacks 1:01:55 You really are proving you're a centrist.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:57 Yeah, yeah. I mean-

David Sacks 1:01:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:01:58 I th- or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought, that seems like the most logical thing to do.

David Sacks 1:02:04 Yeah, you're right. Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:06 Sorry.

David Sacks 1:02:06 100%. 100%.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:07 We figured this out some time ago.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:09 Yeah, I don't know why we have-

David Friedberg 1:02:10 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:02:10 ... to rehash it. Okay. 2023,

Jason Calacanis 1:02:12 worst trend. I'll lead it off. I had three here of worst trends. Number one, antisemitism. Absolutely disgusting and horrible. Two, Trump's rehabilitation. We'll just leave it at that. And then, three, people of low m- moral character using the freedom of speech movement to whitewash their horrible personal behavior. Yes, I'm talking about Alex Jones, to all The Mids in the comments. Sachs, what was the worst trend for you?

David Sacks 1:02:36 You had to have three, didn't you?

Jason Calacanis 1:02:38 Well, I'm gonna go with antisemitism. Those are my two runners-

David Sacks 1:02:41 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:02:41 ... two runners ups.

David Sacks 1:02:41 All right. Fair enough.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:42 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:02:42 I think you guys will like my worst trend. It is the metastasizing national debt. This chart really makes it clear. You can see here the national debt as a function of deficit and revenues, and it's a upside down hockey stick.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:58 Jesus.

David Sacks 1:02:59 If a company could produce user growth that looked like this, I would invest all day long. However, this is not growth. This is basically how much we owe. And it is a bipartisan problem. It's been going on for really 20 plus years, but it is getting worse and worse under Biden.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:17 Yeah. Eight trillion added to the deficit under Trump, and looks like five to six trillion under Biden.

David Sacks 1:03:23 Well, you know, we did have a COVID-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:26 We did have COVID.

David Sacks 1:03:26 ... meltdown where the economy-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:28 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:03:28 ... was down 30% year over year. So both parties-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:30 The tax cuts and COVID, yeah. Both parties-

David Sacks 1:03:32 Both parties supported that bailout and, in hindsight, it was excessive.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:36 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:03:36 Biden's-

Jason Calacanis 1:03:37 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:03:37 ... quote/unquote stimulus was passed on straight party lines after COVID was re- over.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:41 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:03:42 So I think we should just make sure to apportion the blame correctly.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:46 Totally.

David Sacks 1:03:46 But like I said, bipartisan problem.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:48 Yeah, I agree. Bipartisan, and Trump did a very ill-timed tax cut before COVID, so it's a double hit. If you wanna compare it, in eight years, Obama added eight trillion, so it was one trillion a year. These new guys, getting close to two trillion per year. So they doubled the velocity of spending. Just completely disastrous. Chamath, what's the worst trend for you?

David Sacks 1:04:10 I just think it's the, the general state of affairs amongst our young people. Our 20-year-olds and our 30-year-olds I think are really struggling, and it's gotten worse. I'll give you two examples. Here, you see on your screen, this year, 158,000 more Americans died than expected, which is more than all the wars combined in Vietnam. And when you look at where those death rates are, those death rates were coming from 35 to 44-year-olds, which was up 26%, and 25 to 34-year-olds, which was up 20% above pre-COVID levels. And all we can point to from the government establishment is that it's smoking and a bad diet, which doesn't really hang together. And then, the second trend is, when you look at just general marriage rates amongst these same cohort of people, it's meaningfully worse than every cohort above it. So just societally, these folks are not tracking. In whatever dimension you wanna measure, sort of like happiness, fulfillment, stability, safety, something is meaningfully wrong in these cohorts of people, and-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:19 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:05:19 ... we owe it to them to figure it out.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:21 The one thing you missed there, uh, Chamath, in the Western world, at least 36% increase in suicide over the past two decades. So a lot of this is-

David Sacks 1:05:28 That's another one. It's another one. So-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:30 That might be the main one, I think, and this is the, the mental health issues are acute. Okay, we have Friedberg, you're left for the worst trend, the Bestie Award for worst trend of 2023. What do you got?

David Friedberg 1:05:41 I don't know. I had one. I'm gonna change it on the fly.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:43 Oh.

David Friedberg 1:05:43 I'm gonna go with the normalization of spending. I think it's probably the worst trend. Like it's ... you know, it used to be a big deal. Remember when the TARP program happened in '08, and it was an incredible single line item of $800 billion to support the troubled asset relief effort to try and keep the economy stable by buying up all of this failing debt and supporting all of these equities and keeping these businesses going? And now, it's like $100 billion for this, a trillion for that. It's like we've normalized spending, and COVID just made it worse. So to your guys' point earlier about the acceleration of spending-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:22 Mm.

David Friedberg 1:06:22 ... once you spend a dollar, you think it's okay to spend a dollar, and then next time you spend two, it's not that bad. It's only a dollar more. And the next time you spend five, it's only three bucks more. And suddenly, it becomes normal, and this normalization catches up to us. I've harped on this enough, so I won't go into it too much, but I think that's the worst trend.

Jason Calacanis 1:06:36 Who did you, uh, change from? What was your, what was your original?

David Friedberg 1:06:39 My original was the merging of the oppressor/oppressed ideologies-

Jason Calacanis 1:06:45 Oh.

David Friedberg 1:06:45 ... that are in diametric opposition to each other. I just found this, uh, more ironic.... than, uh, the worst trend, I think, which is, like, LGBTQ groups that were pro-Hamas, that were marching and supporting Hamas, which is anti-LGBTQ. It was just so mind-blowing to me to see some of the behavior over the last couple of months that made absolutely no sense, and it shows how little first principles thinking people are actually doing about the things that they're standing up for. Standing up for a free Palestine is one kind of point, but being pro-Hamas when Hamas would have a responsibility of eradicating people like you is just, is just nuts to me. So I, there's just some of the stuff that I've seen where the oppressor oppressed ideology-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:35 Got it.

David Friedberg 1:07:35 ... is, is trained to fit everything, even if it makes absolutely no sense. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:07:40 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:07:40 So it's just really frustrating to see.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:42 Okay, now we go on to a little casual, the Bestie Awards for 2023, favorite media, favorite media, new things that came out in the media. It could be a video game, book, music, or a TV show. I'll lead us off here, just get it out of the way real quick. For me, the Succession finale, extraordinary, one of the best pieces of television ever made. And my sleeper was The Bear Season Two, very niche show on FX. I think I turned a lot of you onto it. And season two had an episode, Episode Five, which is The Forks episode in which Cammy sends Richie to intern at a very elite restaurant, and he's charged with polishing silverware. And, uh, Garrett and him get into it, "Why am I doing all this stupid stuff?" And he just tells him, "Listen, every day here is the freaking Super Bowl." And, uh, it's just a great, great, amazing episode of television with extraordinary performances and writing. Chamath, did you have any, uh, favorite media this year?

David Sacks 1:08:40 Anything that Taylor Swift did this year was-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:43 Ah.

David Sacks 1:08:43 ... white hot.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:44 You're a Swifty.

David Sacks 1:08:45 She is a tour de force. She's incredible, and she's a genius. What can you say? Nothing compares.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:55 Sacks.

David Sacks 1:08:55 I'm gonna use my spot-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:56 Favorite...

David Sacks 1:08:56 ... to draw attention to some podcasts that you may not have heard of, some geopolitics and world affairs podcasts, so that probably m- my number one is The Duran with Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou. I'd also give honorable mention to Judge Napolitano's podcast and Colonel Daniel Davis. I have found these three podcasts to be quite useful in understanding what's happening in the rest of the world, and I found their reporting and analysis to be more accurate than anything you're gonna get in the mainstream media.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:29 Freeburg, any favorite media for you as we get close to wrapping here?

David Friedberg 1:09:33 I recently read a book that I liked. I don't know if I talked about it, called The Idea Factory on the history of Bell Labs and the great-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:39 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:09:39 ... age of American innovation. Strongly recommend it. I had no idea how much this Bell Labs institution touched modern life, from radar, to the transistor, to the nuclear bomb, to computing, even information theory was developed inside of Bell Labs. And it was an incredible organization that took its roots in an institutionalized monopoly, which then enabled them to have one customer that was always a built-in customer, but gave them the freedom and the resourcing to build all of these great things. And for anyone that wants to say that monopolies stifle innovation, I encourage you to read this book because it really says the opposite may be true, that a monopoly enables investment in long-term thinking and long-term ideas that you never otherwise see. So I give it to that. I also had a softer one. Have you guys ever watched Bobbi Althoff's podcast? I found this so funny this year. You guys ever seen it?

David Sacks 1:10:33 Her interview with Drake is hilarious.

David Friedberg 1:10:34 It's so funny. So she interviewed Drake.

David Sacks 1:10:36 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:36 She's interviewed Cuban. She interviewed Shaq.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:38 Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about. The, the deadpanned, yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:41 Yeah, the deadpan. So she's got this, like, wholly disinterested persona, and it totally-

David Sacks 1:10:46 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:46 ... encapsulates, like, a Gen Z, like, uh-

David Sacks 1:10:48 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:10:48 ... personality in a way that you don't get in any other media. It's really... And she's hilarious when she does these interviews. And she's very unique, like, uh, Andy Kaufman or Jim Carrey, like, in that sense, like, unique in how she does this. I just think, like, we'll see if the shtick lasts. Like, she may end up kind of being tired soon and see if she has a second act, but-

David Sacks 1:11:05 The Drake interview was really good. The one with Cuban, I had two problems-

David Friedberg 1:11:09 Not so good.

David Sacks 1:11:09 ... with it. One, they sat on the ground. And then, two, Cuban's feet were really dirty. So-

David Friedberg 1:11:13 Did you see the one with Shaq?

David Sacks 1:11:15 A- and so I was like, "Bro, like"-

David Friedberg 1:11:16 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:11:17 ... "just keep the shoes on and just, you know-"

David Friedberg 1:11:18 The Shaq one was hilarious, but anyway, she's, she's got great content. It's n- it's hit or miss. By the way, I'll also say it's not consistent. Hit or miss, but I don't know, I just found her to be a little bit of a, a, a unique standout in, um, in content this year. Everyone's kind of me too, me too, looks the same. She, she stood out a bit for me.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:36 In that vein, have you seen Ziwe, Z-I-W-E?

David Friedberg 1:11:40 No.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:40 She is a woman who interviews people and then she-

David Sacks 1:11:43 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:43 ... asks people very uncomfortable questions about race, like, "How many Black friends do you have?"

David Friedberg 1:11:48 Uh-huh.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:48 "Name them." And it is hilarious.

David Friedberg 1:11:51 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:11:51 It is, like, the greatest bit ever. Ziwe. Shout out to Ziwe.

David Friedberg 1:11:55 Ziwe, okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:56 And since we went there, on, on, who, who's seen it? You saw it, Chamath?

David Sacks 1:11:59 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:00 I mean, if you're on TikTok, you'll see it because she just had, like, yeah, she just has anybody in pop culture on.

David Friedberg 1:12:05 She had, she had, uh, George Santos on?

Jason Calacanis 1:12:07 She had George Santos on.

David Friedberg 1:12:08 That's George Santos interview.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:09 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:12:09 Wow.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:10 And it was just so-

David Friedberg 1:12:11 Incredible.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:12 ... crazy. On the, uh, podcasting front, shout out to our friend Gwyneth Paltrow. If you don't listen to the GOOP podcast, she does, like, interviews every other time. Really good. Red Scare, anot- another great alternative podcast I like to listen to from the dirtbag left, as they call it, and, uh, shout out Preet Bharara's, uh, Cafe Insider, cafe.com. All right, I think... Is this the end, Producer Nick? Are we here? Did we make it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:12:38 Last one.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:39 Last

Jason Calacanis 1:12:40 one. We have a special award here, the Self Immolation Award. This has been named after Rudy Giuliani, so Rudy Giuliani Self Immolation Award. (laughs) And, uh, this is a tough one to give this year, Sacks.... who do you have? Because this could be quite self-referential here. Go.

David Sacks 1:13:01 I am going to name Liz Magill, the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania...

Jason Calacanis 1:13:06 Ah, she's so welcome.

David Sacks 1:13:07 Who had been vomiting on herself for two months in the aftermath of October 7th before she even appeared at that congressional hearing with the presence of Harvard and MIT.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:16 Mm. Mm.

David Sacks 1:13:17 She answered what was clearly a moral question with a tone-deaf legalistic answer.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:22 Mm.

David Sacks 1:13:22 Saying that advocacy of genocide against Jews depends on context-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:27 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:13:27 ... and calls into question whether one is smart enough to be a university president. It's not a job that demands that much intelligence, but it does require an instinct for knowing when and how to cover your own ass.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:37 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:13:37 When she was finally forced to step down, it felt like a mercy killing.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:41 Yeah. Was she the one smirking too?

David Sacks 1:13:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:13:44 She's the one, she had the awkward smirk.

David Sacks 1:13:45 She went smirking.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:45 That is what I found the most appalling-

David Sacks 1:13:47 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:47 ... was the awkward smirks.

David Sacks 1:13:49 Yep.

Jason Calacanis 1:13:49 Chamath, who lit themself on fire most of all this year? Who, who poured gasoline over their heads and just lit up a stogie?

David Sacks 1:13:58 I think it's the brand and reputation of the Ivies. I think that there was irreparable harm done.

Jason Calacanis 1:14:03 Well done. Yes.

David Sacks 1:14:04 We've had generations now that have been taught that that is where we send our best and brightest kids, but it turns out that they're getting indoctrinated into some very kind of extreme rhetoric that then produces these incapable first principles thinkers that will be the destruction of our society if we don't fix it. So, I think Harvard applications were down 17% already. I expect that trend across the Ivies to go way up. I expect contributions to go down. I expect governments to ratchet down their spending in those schools, and I expect some folks to try to take away their nonprofit status. So, I think that we are going to reallocate the brand equity of the Ivies to good schools, and we will know what the good schools are based on their independence, their ability to churn out first principles thinkers, and their respect for freedom of speech without being moral idiots.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:13 Friedberg, what do you got? Well, well said, Chamath.

David Friedberg 1:15:16 Ivy League presidents.

Jason Calacanis 1:15:17 Okay, well done. No, no, no need to add too much more there, I guess. You know, I was torn here between the namesake of this very award, if you missed it, Rudy Johnly (laughs) Giuliani had a $150 million judgment against him maybe two weeks ago for slandering two poor innocent people in his electorial scam that he ran with Trump, and he, I think, is going to get indicted next year for these fake electorates, so follow the fake electorates one. But that was a close one for me because Kanye West also lit himself on fire the past year with the Adidas contract, and his antisemitism, getting kicked off Twitter X, but I feel like that was mental illness, and I think Rudy John- Giuliani is just stupid. So I give it to Rudy Giuliani, the namesake of this award. (laughs) And I hope Kanye can tell-

David Sacks 1:16:04 Yeah, the only thing I'll say about that, J-Cal, is...

Jason Calacanis 1:16:07 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:16:07 I'm not gonna defend him or his actions at all.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:11 No, you can't, yeah.

David Sacks 1:16:11 However, I do think, I do think that judgment was excessive, and it's part of a pattern of ridiculous judgments that we see when you have, for example, a D.C. jury pool judging a conservative or a Republican whose politics they disagree with. The plaintiffs only asked for $48 million. The jury awarded three times that. It's an excessive award. I think a few million dollars as a penalty would have been a perfectly nice award. I think to bankrupt the man, which is what you're talking about, is becoming a bit of a pile-on, and I'm all in favor of Rudy being the butt of jokes until the point where really you're talking about destroying his life. I think it's gone way too far.

Jason Calacanis 1:16:53 Yeah. These awards, uh, are curious in how large they are. They all get appealed though, and they all come down, so I'm sure that'll come down by some massive percentage

Jason Calacanis 1:17:02 in the near future. This has been the year-end episode. Can you believe it? We made it another year, guys. Here we are at the end of 2023. We'll do our predictions next week, so you'll get our amazing predictions for 2024 in the next episode. Any closing thoughts on the year we just had? Friedberg, how you feeling here at the end of the year? Are you hopeful? Very cheery? Are you sad? Are you excited?

David Friedberg 1:17:26 I've been up since 5:00 AM and I just drank beers, so I'm pretty tired.

David Sacks 1:17:30 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:17:31 (laughs) Okay.

David Friedberg 1:17:31 Um, but, uh, with respect, that's kind of how the whole year feels actually. (laughs) I feel like I-

Jason Calacanis 1:17:35 Exhausted? (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:17:36 Yeah, just got up early, cranked through the day, had some beer, and I'm ready for a nap. But I'm, I'm probably more optimistic going into 2024 than I was going into 2023 'cause that's on a personal basis, and I think, yeah, there's just a lot going on today in the world.

Jason Calacanis 1:17:54 Yeah, it's complex, isn't it?

David Friedberg 1:17:56 I do think as long as we embrace the enlightenment and don't embrace the dark ages, (laughs) we h- we stand a shot at keeping progress alive, and I think that's the, the, the, the defining characteristics of human civilization is progress, and that s- I- I think ultimately resolves all the conflicts and other things. We just got to keep it alive.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:15 Well said. Chamath, how are you feeling here as we wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024?

David Sacks 1:18:19 I think 2022 and 2023 have been, looking back, the most important two years of my professional career. I think I benefited like we all... I think, well, I think all four of us could say this, of just an incredible set of tailwinds, and '22 and '23 were the first time where I was in a position of influence and capital and power, where I had to confront that those tailwinds can quickly become headwinds, and that we are not impervious to them. So, I, like Friedberg, am looking forward to '24 where I can try to put all these learnings to good use. So-It's been generally good.

Jason Calacanis 1:18:59 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:18:59 And '23 was the most important year of my life in the sense that I got remarried, so that's been a huge personal highlight.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:04 Yes, beautiful.

David Sacks 1:19:06 Love that you guys all came to that as well.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:08 Oh, it was a highlight for us too. Absolutely beautiful.

David Sacks 1:19:10 But yeah, I'm ready to, I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start '24.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:14 Sacks, any closing thoughts here?

David Sacks 1:19:16 Well, I think one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we didn't have a recession. I mean, I think most people were betting on a recession in '23. They thought that a soft landing would be almost impossible. And in fact, the data is that soft landings almost never occur. Remember what Larry Summers said to us at our All In Summit this year, which is soft landings are like second marriages. It's the triumph of hope over experience, meaning they almost never happen. And so the fact that we didn't get that, I think that was basically a pretty important bullet dodged. Now that being said, I do think that the whole B2B software industry definitely went through a recession.

Jason Calacanis 1:19:54 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:19:54 But fortunately, I think we bottomed out and are starting to see green shoots now, so things are returning to normal. On the global stage, things are still okay in the sense that the US is not directly in a war, but man, it is pretty scary. We could be pulled into-

Jason Calacanis 1:20:11 It's pretty dynamic, pretty dynamic.

David Sacks 1:20:12 It's very dynamic. We could be pulled into a war in the Middle East anytime. We still have a proxy war going in Ukraine, so there are a lot of risks still on the horizon.

Jason Calacanis 1:20:20 I'll just say for the gentlemen and for the audience, it has been wonderful to have all of you, the audience, the fans of the show, and you besties, uh, in my life over two really tough years. It was, uh, also very proud of myself going into them. I knew I was built for war, and, uh, it was a war the last few years. It was difficult, it was hard, but we all, I think, learned a lot and came out stronger because of it. And I just want to give a particular shout out to all of you guys for making this brand extraordinary and taking it to new heights. Almost all the times I've, I've built things, brands, Engadget, Silicon (inaudible) , All In, whatever it is, uh, it was a solo effort. And it's just been really rewarding to be part of a team. And I want to just give a particular note to, uh, Freeberg, who I think all of us owe a real debt of gratitude towards. He took the All In Summit, which was a very strong start in 2022, and he leveled it up in 2023 amazingly, and I'm just so excited to, to see what we do in 2024 with this amazing brand,