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

1. 0:00 – 4:14

   Welcome to the fourth annual Bestie Awards!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      (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.

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:28

      (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:28

      And running the All-In DEI group, the Rain Man himself, David Sacks. Welcome back to the program.

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:34

      Good to be here.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:35

      Okay. And-

   6. DSDavid Sacks0:36

      (laughs)

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:36

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

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:43

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

   9. DSDavid Sacks0:48

      Cue the music, Nick.

   10. JCJason Calacanis0:49

       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.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:05

       Hold on. Who's drinking some champagne with me? I need some-

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:07

       Champagne popping.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:08

       What are you guys drinking?

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:09

       These are the awards. Everybody wants to know who's gonna be a winner.

   15. DSDavid Sacks1:12

       You're right. I need a drink. Hold on.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:13

       (laughs)

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:14

       He needs a drink for this.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:16

       I need a drink too. Can you, can I go get a drink? Hang on.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:18

       Everybody get a drink. Loosen it up.

   20. DSDavid Sacks1:19

       I'm at my office. I don't have alcohol here.

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:21

       (laughs) Look in the second drawer.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg1:23

       Don't let your winners ride.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:26

       Rain Man, David Sacks.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg1:30

       I'm going all in.

   25. DSDavid Sacks1:31

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

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:34

       Love you, bestie.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:35

       Queen of Quinoa.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg1:37

       I'm going all in.

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:39

       All right, everybody. Welcome to the Bestie Awards for 2023.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:44

       What are you drinking?
2. 4:14 – 10:26

   Biggest Political Winner

   1. JCJason Calacanis4:14

      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?

   2. DSDavid Sacks4:35

      That spread trade paid off in spades.

   3. JCJason Calacanis4:38

      Yeah.

   4. DSDavid Sacks4:38

      But-

   5. JCJason Calacanis4:38

      Big spread trade.

   6. DSDavid Sacks4:39

      Looking back, I think the biggest political winner was Donald Trump.

   7. JCJason Calacanis4:44

      Okay.

   8. DSDavid Sacks4:45

      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-

   9. JCJason Calacanis5:29

      Hmm.

   10. DSDavid Sacks5:30

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

   11. JCJason Calacanis5:41

       Friedberg, who is your biggest political winner of 2023?

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:47

       Who did I give it to last year? Do, do you remember?

   13. JCJason Calacanis5:49

       You gave it to MBS and Saudi, that they would have the ... Your prediction was they would have the most-

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:55

       No, not prediction.

   15. JCJason Calacanis5:55

       ... 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-

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:00

       That's what I thought. Uh, yeah. So, I am giving my biggest winner-

   17. JCJason Calacanis6:02

       It's not a bad one. Yeah.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:02

       I'm giving my biggest political winner award to the nation state of Saudi Arabia.

   19. JCJason Calacanis6:07

       Oh, wow.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg6:07

       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.

   21. JCJason Calacanis6:20

       Hmm.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg6:20

       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-

   23. JCJason Calacanis7:01

       Yeah.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg7:01

       ... my award.

   25. JCJason Calacanis7:02

       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.

   26. DSDavid Sacks7:29

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

   27. JCJason Calacanis7:34

       Abortion rights, huh?

   28. DSDavid Sacks7:35

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

   29. JCJason Calacanis7:41

       Hmm.

   30. DSDavid Sacks7:41

       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.
3. 10:26 – 15:14

   Biggest Political Loser

   1. JCJason Calacanis10:26

      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?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg10:45

      My biggest political loser is the DEI movement.

   3. JCJason Calacanis10:49

      Oh.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg10:49

      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-

   5. JCJason Calacanis11:27

      Hmm.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg11:27

      ... 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.

   7. JCJason Calacanis11:57

      Okay. Sacks, who is your biggest loser in politics for 2023?

   8. DSDavid Sacks12:03

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

   9. JCJason Calacanis12:08

      (laughs)

   10. DSDavid Sacks12:08

       ... 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.

   11. JCJason Calacanis13:09

       Chamath, your biggest political loser in 2023?

   12. DSDavid Sacks13:12

       I had a different choice, but I think-

   13. JCJason Calacanis13:15

       Hmm. Game time change?

   14. DSDavid Sacks13:17

       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.

   15. JCJason Calacanis14:27

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

   16. DSDavid Sacks14:32

       Acronyms, yeah.

   17. JCJason Calacanis14:33

       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.

4. 15:14 – 23:02

   Biggest Political Surprise

   1. JCJason Calacanis15:14

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

   2. DSDavid Sacks15:23

      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.

   3. JCJason Calacanis16:10

      Hmm. Okay. Freiberg?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg16:13

      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.

   5. JCJason Calacanis17:13

      Chamath, biggest political surprise of 2023?

   6. DSDavid Sacks17:16

      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.

   7. JCJason Calacanis17:45

      People like him, that's for sure.

   8. DSDavid Sacks17:47

      Incredible.

   9. JCJason Calacanis17:48

      And nobody would have predicted it.

   10. DSDavid Sacks17:49

       That's a really good one.

   11. JCJason Calacanis17:50

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

   12. DFDavid Friedberg17:57

       Better than Perot.

   13. JCJason Calacanis17:57

       ... got 19%. You think better than 19%?

   14. DSDavid Sacks17:59

       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.

   15. JCJason Calacanis18:18

       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?

   16. DSDavid Sacks18:59

       It hurts Biden the most.

   17. JCJason Calacanis19:01

       You believe that? Okay. What about you, Sax? Who do you think it hurts the most?

   18. DSDavid Sacks19:05

       Unclear right now.

   19. JCJason Calacanis19:06

       Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks19:06

       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.

   21. JCJason Calacanis19:18

       I've heard this before. Any, any thoughts, Friedberg, on that?

   22. DFDavid Friedberg19:21

       What was the question?

   23. JCJason Calacanis19:22

       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?

   24. DFDavid Friedberg19:32

       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.

   25. JCJason Calacanis19:40

       Hmm.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg19:41

       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.

   27. JCJason Calacanis20:22

       Hmm.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg20:22

       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.

   29. JCJason Calacanis20:56

       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.

   30. DSDavid Sacks21:07

       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.
5. 23:02 – 26:50

   Biggest Business Winner

   1. JCJason Calacanis23:02

      with Sax.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg23:02

      (laughs)

   3. JCJason Calacanis23:02

      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?

   4. DSDavid Sacks23:12

      I mean, I don't think this is even close but I think it's Elon Musk.

   5. JCJason Calacanis23:16

      Oh, yeah.

   6. DSDavid Sacks23:18

      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.

   7. JCJason Calacanis23:54

      Okay, Sax, who you got? Who's your biggest business winner?

   8. DSDavid Sacks23:57

      The Magnificent Seven.

   9. JCJason Calacanis23:59

      Yeah. Of course.

   10. DSDavid Sacks23:59

       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%.

   11. Incredible.

   12. JCJason Calacanis24:29

       All right. Sachs says-

   13. DSDavid Sacks24:30

       Good pick.

   14. JCJason Calacanis24:30

       ... the M7. Friedberg, who you got?

   15. DFDavid Friedberg24:33

       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.

   16. JCJason Calacanis25:36

       All right. Very well done. We got Elon Musk and-

   17. DFDavid Friedberg25:38

       Sachs, didn't you work, didn't you work there for a while?

   18. JCJason Calacanis25:40

       One year.

   19. DSDavid Sacks25:41

       At, at Twitter, or-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg25:43

       No, Microsoft.

   21. JCJason Calacanis25:44

       Microsoft.

   22. DSDavid Sacks25:44

       Oh, Microsoft.

   23. JCJason Calacanis25:45

       One year. Did you work there for-

   24. DSDavid Sacks25:46

       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) .

   25. DFDavid Friedberg25:52

       Did you like it?

   26. DSDavid Sacks25:53

       Yeah, it was ... I mean, it's a high quality company for sure.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg25:55

       Yeah.

   28. DSDavid Sacks25:56

       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-

   29. DFDavid Friedberg26:07

       Yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks26:07

       ... I didn't have anything to do. I was kind of just, like, on call.
6. 26:50 – 30:32

   Biggest Business Loser

   1. JCJason Calacanis26:50

      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?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg27:11

      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.

   3. JCJason Calacanis27:53

      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?

   4. DSDavid Sacks28:01

      My biggest business loser is Disney.

   5. JCJason Calacanis28:04

      Mm-hmm.

   6. DSDavid Sacks28:04

      It seems that every aspect-

   7. DFDavid Friedberg28:06

      That's a good one. That's a good one.

   8. JCJason Calacanis28:07

      Yeah.

   9. DSDavid Sacks28:07

      ... of Disney's business (censored) the bed in 2023.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg28:09

       (laughs) .

   11. DSDavid Sacks28:11

       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.

   12. JCJason Calacanis28:24

       (laughs)

   13. DSDavid Sacks28:25

       (laughs)

   14. JCJason Calacanis28:25

       I mean, there's a million examples (laughs) .

   15. DSDavid Sacks28:26

       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-

   16. JCJason Calacanis28:54

       Yup.

   17. DSDavid Sacks28:54

       ... told Iger to GFY.

   18. JCJason Calacanis28:57

       Good for you.

   19. DSDavid Sacks28:57

       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.

   20. JCJason Calacanis29:07

       I, too, picked Disney.

   21. DSDavid Sacks29:09

       (laughs)

   22. JCJason Calacanis29:09

       I put Disney and Warner Brothers.

   23. DSDavid Sacks29:10

       (laughs) .

   24. JCJason Calacanis29:11

       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?

   25. DSDavid Sacks29:40

       Well, you, you guys partially win-

   26. JCJason Calacanis29:43

       Okay.

   27. DSDavid Sacks29:43

       ... 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-

   28. JCJason Calacanis30:22

       There you go.

   29. DSDavid Sacks30:23

       ... that was pretty clear.

   30. JCJason Calacanis30:24

       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.

7. 30:32 – 35:57

   Biggest Business Surprise

   1. JCJason Calacanis30:32

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

   2. DSDavid Sacks30:41

      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.

   3. JCJason Calacanis30:51

      Hmm.

   4. DSDavid Sacks30:51

      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.

   5. JCJason Calacanis31:10

      Yeah, I remember.

   6. DSDavid Sacks31:11

      Even you and me took, took some heat.

   7. JCJason Calacanis31:13

      Yeah.

   8. DSDavid Sacks31:13

      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.

   9. JCJason Calacanis32:01

      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?

   10. DSDavid Sacks32:44

       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.

   11. JCJason Calacanis33:29

       Hmm.

   12. DSDavid Sacks33:29

       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.

   13. JCJason Calacanis34:02

       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?

   14. DSDavid Sacks34:13

       (laughs)

   15. JCJason Calacanis34:14

       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.

   16. DSDavid Sacks34:20

       By the way, Jason-

   17. JCJason Calacanis34:21

       Mm-hmm.

   18. DSDavid Sacks34:21

       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."

   19. JCJason Calacanis34:57

       Sure.

   20. DSDavid Sacks34:57

       I mean, that is just a perfect-

   21. JCJason Calacanis34:58

       Keep it general, yeah. Keep it general.

   22. DSDavid Sacks34:59

       ...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."

   23. 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.

   24. Mm-hmm.

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

   26. JCJason Calacanis35:42

       Yeah.

   27. DSDavid Sacks35:43

       So it works both ways.

   28. JCJason Calacanis35:44

       Freeberg, got a business surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the Bestie Awards?

   29. DFDavid Friedberg35:49

       The biggest surprise was Sam Altman's ouster and return all in a weekend, so-

   30. JCJason Calacanis35:52

       (laughs)
8. 35:57 – 40:30

   Best Science Breakthrough

   1. JCJason Calacanis35:57

      Okay.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg35:57

      Yeah.

   3. JCJason Calacanis35:57

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

   4. DSDavid Sacks36:04

      I've got one.

   5. I've got one too.

   6. JCJason Calacanis36:05

      You've got one? Sax, you're awake during the Sax-

   7. DSDavid Sacks36:08

      I've got one.

   8. JCJason Calacanis36:08

      ... segment? Go ahead.

   9. DSDavid Sacks36:09

      Yeah, so-

   10. JCJason Calacanis36:09

       What's the biggest science breakthrough for you, Sax?

   11. DSDavid Sacks36:10

       Well, a- according to NASA, there's a new look at Uranus.

   12. (laughs)

   13. DFDavid Friedberg36:14

       (laughs)

   14. DSDavid Sacks36:14

       That's right, J-Cal.

   15. JCJason Calacanis36:15

       Ah! Gotcha.

   16. DSDavid Sacks36:16

       That's right, J-Cal. These are never-before-seen-

   17. Never-before-seen. (laughs)

   18. ... deep, penetrating shots of Uranus.

   19. (laughs)

   20. JCJason Calacanis36:24

       How deep and penetrating are these-

   21. DSDavid Sacks36:25

       Very deep, very penetrating.

   22. JCJason Calacanis36:27

       (laughs) .

   23. DSDavid Sacks36:27

       From the James Webb Space Telescope.

   24. JCJason Calacanis36:29

       Wow.Freeberg, when your anus gets probed this deeply-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg36:34

       (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis36:34

       ... what's your takeaway? What, what's the feeling you get in this deep probing of your anus?

   27. DFDavid Friedberg36:40

       Awe, wonder, mystery.

   28. JCJason Calacanis36:42

       Awe and wonder?

   29. DFDavid Friedberg36:43

       (laughs)

   30. JCJason Calacanis36:44

       Well, I-
9. 40:30 – 42:34

   Biggest Flash in the Pan

   1. JCJason Calacanis40:30

      Now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan. Who is your biggest flash in the pan, Chamath?

   2. DSDavid Sacks40:36

      Oh my gosh, this is, um ... Well, I'll, I'll tell you what I-

   3. JCJason Calacanis40:40

      It could be tech, it could be business, it could be society, it could be pop culture.

   4. DSDavid Sacks40:43

      I wrote down SBF.

   5. JCJason Calacanis40:45

      Okay.

   6. DSDavid Sacks40:46

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

   7. DFDavid Friedberg40:55

      (laughs)

   8. DSDavid Sacks40:55

      Even had great user accounts.

   9. JCJason Calacanis40:58

      Sacks, I hope that doesn't hit too close to home. Who was yours?

   10. DSDavid Sacks41:02

       Same ballpark. I said effective altruism.

   11. JCJason Calacanis41:04

       (laughs) Well done.

   12. DSDavid Sacks41:04

       The EA movement took a big hit with SBF.

   13. JCJason Calacanis41:08

       Yep.

   14. DSDavid Sacks41:08

       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.

   15. JCJason Calacanis41:17

       Yeah.

   16. DSDavid Sacks41:17

       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.

   17. JCJason Calacanis41:30

       Okay. Freeberg, you got a flash in the pan for 2023.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg41:33

       It was the obvious breakthrough in superconducting room temperature material, LK-99.

   19. JCJason Calacanis41:39

       Yeah.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg41:39

       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.

   21. JCJason Calacanis42:05

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

   22. DFDavid Friedberg42:14

       (laughs)

   23. DSDavid Sacks42:15

       (laughs)

   24. JCJason Calacanis42:16

       And used, and used his election campaign funds to buy designer clothes-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg42:20

       That's good. (laughs)

   26. JCJason Calacanis42:20

       ... and get botox. So, yes, queen.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg42:23

       And Sephora.

   28. JCJason Calacanis42:24

       And Sephora.

   29. DSDavid Sacks42:24

       Not bad. Not bad.

   30. JCJason Calacanis42:25

       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.

10. 42:34 – 44:53

    Best CEO

    1. JCJason Calacanis42:34

       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?

    2. DSDavid Sacks43:07

       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.

    3. JCJason Calacanis43:30

       Well done. Sacks, who do you got?

    4. DSDavid Sacks43:33

       I have Jensen Huang, uh, CEO of NVIDIA-

    5. JCJason Calacanis43:36

       Sure.

    6. DSDavid Sacks43:36

       ... 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.

    7. JCJason Calacanis43:57

       Who do you got, Friedberg?

    8. DFDavid Friedberg43:59

       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.

11. 44:53 – 47:07

    Best Investor

    1. DFDavid Friedberg44:53

    2. JCJason Calacanis44:53

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

    3. DSDavid Sacks45:01

       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.

    4. JCJason Calacanis45:42

       Sacks, who do you got?

    5. DSDavid Sacks45:43

       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-

    6. JCJason Calacanis46:16

       (laughs)

    7. DSDavid Sacks46:16

       (laughs)

    8. ... DEI double standards, grifting, and plagiarism.

    9. JCJason Calacanis46:19

       Well done. All right.

    10. DSDavid Sacks46:20

        (laughs)

    11. JCJason Calacanis46:20

        Friedberg, who you got?

    12. DFDavid Friedberg46:21

        I also said Ackman for his timing on the, the, the Treasury trade.

    13. JCJason Calacanis46:25

        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.

12. 47:07 – 50:04

    Best Turnaround

    1. JCJason Calacanis47:07

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

    2. DSDavid Sacks47:13

       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.

    3. JCJason Calacanis47:25

       Hmm.

    4. DSDavid Sacks47:26

       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.

    5. JCJason Calacanis47:59

       Sacks, who do you got?

    6. DSDavid Sacks48:00

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

    7. JCJason Calacanis48:05

       Oh (laughs) !

    8. DFDavid Friedberg48:06

       Oh, wow.

    9. JCJason Calacanis48:07

       Ho-ho-ho-ho! (laughs)

    10. DFDavid Friedberg48:09

        Wow.

    11. DSDavid Sacks48:10

        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.

    12. DFDavid Friedberg48:37

        Oh.

    13. JCJason Calacanis48:38

        (laughs)

    14. DFDavid Friedberg48:40

        Bag holder. Bag holder for the win.

    15. JCJason Calacanis48:42

        ... F the bids. (laughs) Friedberg, who do you got? Biggest business turnaround.

    16. DFDavid Friedberg48:47

        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.

    17. JCJason Calacanis49:02

        Say more, say more.

    18. DFDavid Friedberg49:04

        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.

    19. JCJason Calacanis49:21

        (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,

13. 50:04 – 54:21

    Worst Company

    1. JCJason Calacanis50:04

       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?

    2. DSDavid Sacks50:20

       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."

    3. JCJason Calacanis51:37

       All right. Friedberg, worst company of 2023 for you? Do you have a worst company ?

    4. DFDavid Friedberg51:42

       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...

    5. DSDavid Sacks52:38

       (laughs)

    6. DFDavid Friedberg52:40

       That's the most loathsome company of 2023.

    7. Sounds delicious. (laughs)

    8. I'm sorry, guys. (laughs)

    9. JCJason Calacanis52:48

       Dude.

    10. DFDavid Friedberg52:50

        You went off camera.

    11. JCJason Calacanis52:50

        That's not cool, man.

    12. DFDavid Friedberg52:51

        You, you, you were went off camera. (censored) you Jacob.

    13. JCJason Calacanis52:54

        No, you- you started laughing. It's not a funny thing.

    14. DFDavid Friedberg52:57

        I saw you laughing, that's why I started laughing.

    15. JCJason Calacanis52:59

        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?

    16. DFDavid Friedberg53:10

        It's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank.

    17. JCJason Calacanis53:13

        Mm.

    18. DFDavid Friedberg53:14

        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.

    19. JCJason Calacanis53:24

        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.

    20. DSDavid Sacks54:09

        I'm not gonna defend Fox after they fired Tucker.

    21. JCJason Calacanis54:11

        Exactly, exactly. And that's why I put it in there for you.

    22. DSDavid Sacks54:14

        I do think the judgments, or the magnitude of the judgments, are ridiculous.

    23. JCJason Calacanis54:17

        Hmm. Okay. Now it's time. We're gonna have a little

14. 54:21 – 56:53

    Best Meme

    1. JCJason Calacanis54:21

       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.

    2. DFDavid Friedberg54:41

       (laughs)

    3. JCJason Calacanis54:43

       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-

    4. DSDavid Sacks54:55

       Jesus.

    5. JCJason Calacanis54:55

       ... something is going off (laughs) the track, whether it's a market-

    6. DSDavid Sacks54:59

       Wow.

    7. JCJason Calacanis54:59

       ... 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?

    8. DSDavid Sacks55:08

       Well, I, I think the meme of the year had to be the GFY. Uh, Elon's-

    9. JCJason Calacanis55:12

       Good for you.

    10. DSDavid Sacks55:12

        ... 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.

    11. JCJason Calacanis55:24

        Good for you.

    12. DSDavid Sacks55:25

        It's like a conductor of an orchestra, so ... (laughs)

    13. JCJason Calacanis55:27

        It's just a standard good for you. Chamath, did you have a f- (laughs)

    14. DSDavid Sacks55:31

        (laughs)

    15. JCJason Calacanis55:31

        Did you have a favorite ... Chamath, a favorite meme of 2023?

    16. DSDavid Sacks55:33

        Yeah. Nick, if you wanna just throw it up there.

    17. (laughs)

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

    19. JCJason Calacanis55:42

        No, he said, "I'm in journalism."

    20. DSDavid Sacks55:44

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

    21. JCJason Calacanis55:49

        Hmm.

    22. DSDavid Sacks55:49

        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.

    23. JCJason Calacanis56:15

        Yeah. Yeah, it's a-

    24. DSDavid Sacks56:16

        That's never been more true than this year.

    25. JCJason Calacanis56:18

        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?

    26. DFDavid Friedberg56:32

        No, I didn't put anything on this.

    27. JCJason Calacanis56:34

        Okay.

    28. DFDavid Friedberg56:34

        (laughs)

    29. JCJason Calacanis56:34

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

    30. DSDavid Sacks56:38

        (laughs)
15. 56:53 – 59:57

    Best New Tech

    1. JCJason Calacanis56:53

       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?

    2. DSDavid Sacks57:59

       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-

    3. JCJason Calacanis58:06

       Sure.

    4. DSDavid Sacks58:07

       ... or 2021 or 2022. Nothing new that caught my eye this year.

    5. JCJason Calacanis58:10

       Sachs.

    6. DSDavid Sacks58:12

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

    7. (laughs)

    8. JCJason Calacanis58:18

       (laughs)

    9. DSDavid Sacks58:18

       (laughs) Of course, it's great. Yeah, yeah, it is. (laughs)

    10. JCJason Calacanis58:20

        But if you do fly with other humans who you don't know-

    11. DSDavid Sacks58:23

        I-

    12. JCJason Calacanis58:23

        ... you would be impressed.

    13. DSDavid Sacks58:24

        ... 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.

    14. JCJason Calacanis58:32

        Friedberg, best new tech?

    15. DFDavid Friedberg58:35

        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-

    16. DSDavid Sacks58:54

        Uh-huh.

    17. DFDavid Friedberg58:54

        ... 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.

16. 59:57 – 1:02:12

    Best Trend

    1. DFDavid Friedberg59:57

    2. JCJason Calacanis59:57

       Okay. 2023 best trend. Chamath, what was the best trend of 2023 for you?

    3. DSDavid Sacks1:00:03

       I actually, uh, didn't really ... couldn't figure one out.

    4. JCJason Calacanis1:00:06

       Okay. Sachs, do you got a best trend for 2023? Something that happened often, it became a trend.

    5. DSDavid Sacks1:00:12

       My best trend is the return of colorblindness as the standard-

    6. JCJason Calacanis1:00:16

       Mm.

    7. DSDavid Sacks1:00:16

       ... 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.

    8. JCJason Calacanis1:00:45

       Friedberg, what was your best trend of 2023?

    9. DFDavid Friedberg1:00:49

       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.

    10. JCJason Calacanis1:01:40

        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-

    11. DSDavid Sacks1:01:53

        Nice.

    12. JCJason Calacanis1:01:53

        ... and meritocracy thriving. Nicely done.

    13. DSDavid Sacks1:01:55

        You really are proving you're a centrist.

    14. JCJason Calacanis1:01:57

        Yeah, yeah. I mean-

    15. DSDavid Sacks1:01:58

        (laughs)

    16. JCJason Calacanis1:01:58

        I th- or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought, that seems like the most logical thing to do.

    17. DSDavid Sacks1:02:04

        Yeah, you're right. Absolutely.

    18. JCJason Calacanis1:02:06

        Sorry.

    19. DSDavid Sacks1:02:06

        100%. 100%.

    20. JCJason Calacanis1:02:07

        Yeah.

    21. DSDavid Sacks1:02:07

        We figured this out some time ago.

    22. JCJason Calacanis1:02:09

        Yeah, I don't know why we have-

    23. DFDavid Friedberg1:02:10

        (laughs)

    24. JCJason Calacanis1:02:10

        ... to rehash it. Okay. 2023,

17. 1:02:12 – 1:07:42

    Worst Trend

    1. JCJason Calacanis1:02:12

       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?

    2. DSDavid Sacks1:02:36

       You had to have three, didn't you?

    3. JCJason Calacanis1:02:38

       Well, I'm gonna go with antisemitism. Those are my two runners-

    4. DSDavid Sacks1:02:41

       (laughs)

    5. JCJason Calacanis1:02:41

       ... two runners ups.

    6. DSDavid Sacks1:02:41

       All right. Fair enough.

    7. JCJason Calacanis1:02:42

       Yeah.

    8. DSDavid Sacks1:02:42

       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.

    9. JCJason Calacanis1:02:58

       Jesus.

    10. DSDavid Sacks1:02:59

        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.

    11. JCJason Calacanis1:03:17

        Yeah. Eight trillion added to the deficit under Trump, and looks like five to six trillion under Biden.

    12. DSDavid Sacks1:03:23

        Well, you know, we did have a COVID-

    13. JCJason Calacanis1:03:26

        We did have COVID.

    14. DSDavid Sacks1:03:26

        ... meltdown where the economy-

    15. JCJason Calacanis1:03:28

        Yeah.

    16. DSDavid Sacks1:03:28

        ... was down 30% year over year. So both parties-

    17. JCJason Calacanis1:03:30

        The tax cuts and COVID, yeah. Both parties-

    18. DSDavid Sacks1:03:32

        Both parties supported that bailout and, in hindsight, it was excessive.

    19. JCJason Calacanis1:03:36

        Yeah.

    20. DSDavid Sacks1:03:36

        Biden's-

    21. JCJason Calacanis1:03:37

        Yeah.

    22. DSDavid Sacks1:03:37

        ... quote/unquote stimulus was passed on straight party lines after COVID was re- over.

    23. JCJason Calacanis1:03:41

        Yeah.

    24. DSDavid Sacks1:03:42

        So I think we should just make sure to apportion the blame correctly.

    25. JCJason Calacanis1:03:46

        Totally.

    26. DSDavid Sacks1:03:46

        But like I said, bipartisan problem.

    27. JCJason Calacanis1:03:48

        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?

    28. DSDavid Sacks1:04:10

        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-

    29. JCJason Calacanis1:05:19

        Yeah.

    30. DSDavid Sacks1:05:19

        ... we owe it to them to figure it out.
18. 1:07:42 – 1:12:40

    Favorite Media

    1. DFDavid Friedberg1:07:42

    2. JCJason Calacanis1:07:42

       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?

    3. DSDavid Sacks1:08:40

       Anything that Taylor Swift did this year was-

    4. JCJason Calacanis1:08:43

       Ah.

    5. DSDavid Sacks1:08:43

       ... white hot.

    6. JCJason Calacanis1:08:44

       You're a Swifty.

    7. DSDavid Sacks1:08:45

       She is a tour de force. She's incredible, and she's a genius. What can you say? Nothing compares.

    8. JCJason Calacanis1:08:55

       Sacks.

    9. DSDavid Sacks1:08:55

       I'm gonna use my spot-

    10. JCJason Calacanis1:08:56

        Favorite...

    11. DSDavid Sacks1:08:56

        ... 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.

    12. JCJason Calacanis1:09:29

        Freeburg, any favorite media for you as we get close to wrapping here?

    13. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:33

        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-

    14. JCJason Calacanis1:09:39

        Yes.

    15. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:39

        ... 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?

    16. DSDavid Sacks1:10:33

        Her interview with Drake is hilarious.

    17. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:34

        It's so funny. So she interviewed Drake.

    18. DSDavid Sacks1:10:36

        Yeah.

    19. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:36

        She's interviewed Cuban. She interviewed Shaq.

    20. JCJason Calacanis1:10:38

        Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about. The, the deadpanned, yeah.

    21. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:41

        Yeah, the deadpan. So she's got this, like, wholly disinterested persona, and it totally-

    22. DSDavid Sacks1:10:46

        Yeah.

    23. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:46

        ... encapsulates, like, a Gen Z, like, uh-

    24. DSDavid Sacks1:10:48

        Yeah.

    25. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:48

        ... 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-

    26. DSDavid Sacks1:11:05

        The Drake interview was really good. The one with Cuban, I had two problems-

    27. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:09

        Not so good.

    28. DSDavid Sacks1:11:09

        ... with it. One, they sat on the ground. And then, two, Cuban's feet were really dirty. So-

    29. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:13

        Did you see the one with Shaq?

    30. DSDavid Sacks1:11:15

        A- and so I was like, "Bro, like"-
19. 1:12:40 – 1:17:02

    The Rudy Giuliani Award for Self-Immolation

    1. JCJason Calacanis1:12:40

       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.

    2. DSDavid Sacks1:13:01

       I am going to name Liz Magill, the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania...

    3. JCJason Calacanis1:13:06

       Ah, she's so welcome.

    4. DSDavid Sacks1:13:07

       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.

    5. JCJason Calacanis1:13:16

       Mm. Mm.

    6. DSDavid Sacks1:13:17

       She answered what was clearly a moral question with a tone-deaf legalistic answer.

    7. JCJason Calacanis1:13:22

       Mm.

    8. DSDavid Sacks1:13:22

       Saying that advocacy of genocide against Jews depends on context-

    9. JCJason Calacanis1:13:27

       (laughs)

    10. DSDavid Sacks1:13:27

        ... 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.

    11. JCJason Calacanis1:13:37

        (laughs)

    12. DSDavid Sacks1:13:37

        When she was finally forced to step down, it felt like a mercy killing.

    13. JCJason Calacanis1:13:41

        Yeah. Was she the one smirking too?

    14. DSDavid Sacks1:13:44

        Yeah. (laughs)

    15. JCJason Calacanis1:13:44

        She's the one, she had the awkward smirk.

    16. DSDavid Sacks1:13:45

        She went smirking.

    17. JCJason Calacanis1:13:45

        That is what I found the most appalling-

    18. DSDavid Sacks1:13:47

        Yeah.

    19. JCJason Calacanis1:13:47

        ... was the awkward smirks.

    20. DSDavid Sacks1:13:49

        Yep.

    21. JCJason Calacanis1:13:49

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

    22. DSDavid Sacks1:13:58

        I think it's the brand and reputation of the Ivies. I think that there was irreparable harm done.

    23. JCJason Calacanis1:14:03

        Well done. Yes.

    24. DSDavid Sacks1:14:04

        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.

    25. JCJason Calacanis1:15:13

        Friedberg, what do you got? Well, well said, Chamath.

    26. DFDavid Friedberg1:15:16

        Ivy League presidents.

    27. JCJason Calacanis1:15:17

        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-

    28. DSDavid Sacks1:16:04

        Yeah, the only thing I'll say about that, J-Cal, is...

    29. JCJason Calacanis1:16:07

        Yeah.

    30. DSDavid Sacks1:16:07

        I'm not gonna defend him or his actions at all.
20. 1:17:02 – 1:21:45

    Final Thoughts

    1. JCJason Calacanis1:17:02

       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?

    2. DFDavid Friedberg1:17:26

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

    3. DSDavid Sacks1:17:30

       (laughs)

    4. JCJason Calacanis1:17:31

       (laughs) Okay.

    5. DFDavid Friedberg1:17:31

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

    6. JCJason Calacanis1:17:35

       Exhausted? (laughs)

    7. DFDavid Friedberg1:17:36

       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.

    8. JCJason Calacanis1:17:54

       Yeah, it's complex, isn't it?

    9. DFDavid Friedberg1:17:56

       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.

    10. JCJason Calacanis1:18:15

        Well said. Chamath, how are you feeling here as we wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024?

    11. DSDavid Sacks1:18:19

        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.

    12. JCJason Calacanis1:18:59

        Yeah.

    13. DSDavid Sacks1:18:59

        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.

    14. JCJason Calacanis1:19:04

        Yes, beautiful.

    15. DSDavid Sacks1:19:06

        Love that you guys all came to that as well.

    16. JCJason Calacanis1:19:08

        Oh, it was a highlight for us too. Absolutely beautiful.

    17. DSDavid Sacks1:19:10

        But yeah, I'm ready to, I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start '24.

    18. JCJason Calacanis1:19:14

        Sacks, any closing thoughts here?

    19. DSDavid Sacks1:19:16

        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.

    20. JCJason Calacanis1:19:54

        (laughs)

    21. DSDavid Sacks1:19:54

        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-

    22. JCJason Calacanis1:20:11

        It's pretty dynamic, pretty dynamic.

    23. DSDavid Sacks1:20:12

        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.

    24. JCJason Calacanis1:20:20

        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, memberships, tequiles, another 50th episode, and a great All In Summit next year, I hope. So, shout out to my guy, Freeberg. For the Dictator, the Sultan of Science, Chairman Dictator... Sorry, I apologize for getting that inc- incorrect there. We'll get it right. Chairman Dictator and the Rain Man, David Sacks, I am the world's greatest moderator, and we will see you in 2024. Bye-bye.

Episode duration: 1:22:49