All-In PodcastE40: A Bestie gets COVID, Delta breakthrough, Billionaire Space Race & more
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,027 words- 0:00 – 9:30
Bestie game show: Who got COVID? How was the experience?
- JCJason Calacanis
This week, we're gonna play our favorite new game show, Guess Who's Got COVID? Yes, that's right. Somebody on the pod-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Hey, hey, hey. He has COVID.
- JCJason Calacanis
... somebody's got COVID. Hey, hey, hey. It's not the me.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh, hey-
- JCJason Calacanis
Hey, hey, hey.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... you're ruining the game, Jamal.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) Oh, sorry. So here's the game. Person who got COVID- Have they been vaccinated or not? Okay, all four of us have been vaccinated. We covered that on our previous pod. So everybody's been vaccinated.
- DSDavid Sacks
Double vaxxed.
- JCJason Calacanis
Did we all get Pfizer? I was Pfizer.
- DSDavid Sacks
Pfizer.
- JCJason Calacanis
Pfizer.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Pfizer. Okay, so Pfizer across the board. We got quads. And this is a breakthrough infection. Has anybody taken a Z-Pak after a night of partying? (laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
I have.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Oh my God. (laughs) Okay, the pod lasted 39 episodes. I'm done.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
That was good. That was good.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay, so number one. Clue number one, this bestie got a breakthrough infection outdoors at a restaurant. Number one, got it outdoors. Number two, got it from somebody who was also vaccinated. Number three, this bestie does not fly commercial and-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(gasps)
- JCJason Calacanis
... he's not a fan of being, uh, interrupted, and he is not an ev- evangelical.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
David Sacks.
- JCJason Calacanis
The breakthrough vaccination.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
David Sacks.
- JCJason Calacanis
David Sacks.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I'm glad that, uh, my getting a breakthrough case of COVID is, uh, is-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... comedy fodder for you somehow.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
Let your winners ride.
- JCJason Calacanis
Rain man, David Sacks.
- DSDavid Sacks
And I said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
- 9:30 – 24:26
Delta breakthrough causing concern, potential new approaches, vaccine mandates
- JCJason Calacanis
sake in all likelihood. Freeburg last week, I was, uh, asking you, or maybe it was two weeks ago, I was considering getting the Moderna 'cause I was like, "I think getting two of these things will boost you into the high 90s." You said I was crazy. Uh, has your position changed on that?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yes.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay, explain. 'Cause this is the one time I'm ever gonna be right about science a week before you. (laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
So I, I think the, I think the data up to that point didn't necessarily, um, kind of validate th- that additional level of action. But now it does. And I think new data is coming out. So I saw an executive from a pharmaceutical company a few days ago.
- JCJason Calacanis
Okay.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Who broke down some statistics that they looked at in Israel. And what they were identifying was that of the newly infected cases in Israel of people that are vaccinated, uh, nearly two thirds of those people were vaccinated in January. Um, about 30% were vaccinated in February, and less than 10% were vaccinated in March. And I'm just approximating and I'm, and I, and I'm, I'm, I'm just kind of transcribing, you know, uh, fr- from kind of what I remember him saying. And so he said, "You know, the, the more recent vaccinations, we're not seeing breakthrough cases, breakthrough infections." So the, the more recently you're vaccinated, um, the, uh, the less likely you are to have this. And then I, I met with a, a pretty well-known virologist a few days ago as well, who highlighted for me that we are seeing antibody titers decline over time in people. But there's other studies that are showing, which means that the antibodies against COVID in your blood after you get the vaccine slowly go down over time. So we're seeing that.
- JCJason Calacanis
We knew that, right?
- DFDavid Friedberg
We, we knew that to some extent. But there was another study that showed that memory B cells, B cells are the immune cells that make antibodies, and they remember the antibodies to make. And they were worried, are we losing those B cells in the human body? And another study found actually they're in your lymph nodes. So they, they, they went in, they pulled them out, and they identified, look, the- these B cells are persistent. We are having a persistent immune memory to COVID when we get exposed to the vaccine or the virus. And, um, and so, you know, those two data points, both of them kind of said, "I think we're gonna need to do a booster very soon for everyone, and we're gonna need to get a third shot."
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The tale, Freeburg seems like it's like six months.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, it sounds like he was saying that you're gonna see an efficacy drop to that kind of two thirds level after about six months of your ... after getting your, your vaccine. And, you know, he said, "Look, this Delta variant is virulent, but i- you know, the, the more pressing kind of point isn't that it's this variant that's breaking through. It's that the e- efficiency of these vaccines at this point looks like it's such that we're gonna need to do boosters." Now, Pfizer went to the White House this week.... with some of this data and they presented it to the White House and the White House said, uh, if you guys followed the news, I- I- I- I'm hearing this, I'm, I'm repeating what I read in news reports at this point, but what they said was, uh, y- you know, "We're not ready to kind of commit to doing booster shots for a couple of reasons. One is there are a lot of people out there that haven't had their first shots. Um, and, uh, we're seeing the people that are having these breakthrough infections almost universally, not always, but ver- very large majority having very mild symptoms and not getting hospitalized and the, and the death rate is still very, very low."
- JCJason Calacanis
In other words, the vaccine did its job.
- DFDavid Friedberg
The vaccine didn't, didn't prevent, you know, an infection, meaning that the virus starts replicating i- in a, in a way that's uncontrolled in your body, but that your immune system had enough of a defense to keep it from causing severe disease in your body.
- JCJason Calacanis
99% of the people going to the hospital are unvaccinated, right?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Exactly. And so we're seeing that, that great success still with the vaccine, but they are seeing, and there are now studies that, you know, I think referenced to your earlier point, that, you know, if you put a different RNA strain, um, uh, RNA sequence into your body, which Moderna and Pfizer have slightly different, you know, sequences, you end up cr- creating different antibodies and having more diversity of antibodies, uh, can, uh, kind of provide greater immunity. So it's almost certain we're gonna get boosters and that we're gonna end up seeing them hit the market next month in September.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
But Freeburg-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... is the, is the booster different than the original? So for example, if I get a Pfizer booster, am, am I only basically getting still an expression of that RNA strand that I'm supposed to basically... Like, is it the same formulation, the same dosage?
- DFDavid Friedberg
So, so both of those options are still, uh, up in the air. And so we may still get the same vaccines that we were getting before. You could go get a Moderna shot. You could go get another Pfizer shot of the exact same RNA sequence that you got before, or they may introduce some new ones. And so th- all the pharma companies are proposing both, uh, approaches and they're pursuing both paths right now and we'll see where we end up.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And what about swapping between an r- an RNA approach and a traditional vaccine approach? So getting J&J plus Moderna or Pfizer v- versus, like there's a lot of A/B testing we need to do to figure out what is the most efficacious and useful path here.
- JCJason Calacanis
That cocktail-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Right? That cocktail-
- JCJason Calacanis
This is exactly like the, this is, reminds me exactly of HIV where it took 10 years for them to figure out what cocktail actually worked the best.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And now, look, HIV is, I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of-
- JCJason Calacanis
Survivable, yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... nothing. It's really not that, not that bad and the way that we, probably for those of us in our 40s have it emblazoned in our mind as how bad it is versus how bad it is really-
- JCJason Calacanis
It was a death sentence.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
It w- it seemed like a death sentence and today it's kind of more, it's more manageable than frankly-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Like, it's a chronic disease now that's manageable.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
At best. Yeah, it's the best.
- JCJason Calacanis
It's like having diabetes or something, yeah.
- 24:26 – 40:09
Implications on the economy, will people self-isolate even without government shutdowns?
- JCJason Calacanis
is, yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
L- let me just highlight what I'm most concerned about. I, I am most concerned about what's, what's happening with Sax, uh, just anecdotally speaking. I'm not gonna speak to the... I'll speak to one statistic, but like anecdotally speaking, I'm hearing this happening more, more frequently. I don't know about you guys.... other friends, other people you know. But a lot of other people I'm hearing about that are double vaxxed that are now getting COVID. So (sighs) as that starts to happen, uh, the implications for the economy, I think, are pretty significant, um, because I think people, whether there's a policy change or not, people are gonna get scared again. And people, if we're not kind of enforcing economic lockdown, people will go into social lockdown, um, and we're gonna revisit, uh, you know, more of the behavior we saw over the past year where people are gonna be nervous to travel, uh, people are gonna be nervous to fly, people are gonna be nervous to go to restaurants. And, you know, the downstream consequences of everyone kinda locking up again, even if the government doesn't e- enforce lockups, uh, could be pretty catastrophic, especially-
- JCJason Calacanis
A- are you feeling that way yourself, Freeberg? In other words, you can see-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Am I gonna lock myself up?
- JCJason Calacanis
Are you gonna go to dinner? Are you gonna go to travel to Italy or to, you know, Japan or, you know, would you go to Disneyland with your kids? How is it affecting you, your personal behavior, being a man of science?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Uh, so, so m- my personal circumstances are a little different right now, uh, not, not to get into it. Um, uh, just with my, uh, e- e- e- you know, my wife's pregnant and we're moving houses, and so we, we've got a bunch of reasons why we're not traveling and, and, and exposing ourselves unnecessarily right now. Um, but, uh, I, I would say that at this point, uh, y- you know, if all other things being equal, would I go to Disneyland with my kids? I would probably wait right now, six to 12 weeks-
- DSDavid Sacks
Mm-hmm.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... to see what happens here.
- DSDavid Sacks
Right. Well, also, uh, uh-
- DFDavid Friedberg
And so, so I, I, I think, like, if, if I'm feeling that way now, I think a lot of people are gonna be feeling that way in, in the next four weeks as they hear about more friends getting COVID.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Now, the, the, you know, the good news is the hospitals... And so, so I am most concerned, we are in a very, very, very, very delicate economic recovery right now. And, you know, we have put out so much money to stimulate this economy. Everyone is so walking on, like, the razor's edge to keep things, you know, growing. And we were afraid of inflation. Lumber prices today, by the way, are lower than they were when this whole kind of inflationary thing started and everyone was freaking out about it. So, um, you know, lumber prices are lower than they were at the start of the year, which is, you know, like, a l- a lot of this kind of inflation risk has kinda come out of the equation already, so the markets have taken that pricing out. And now, we're gonna be in a circumstance where people might cancel their travel, people might cancel their, their restaurants, people might stop going to the office again, stop, you know, getting in the car, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, I am most concerned about, like, the psychological effects of, of what we're seeing with the, these breakthrough infections, th- the frequency of them. Now, if you look at the Israel data, so Israel had zero deaths for two weeks. They're now averaging about one death a day. Um, and despite this, you know, huge increment, they're getting about f- I think 500, uh, breakthrough infections a day right now. So that is good statistical news, right? Statistically, these breakthrough infections are not fatal, they're not causing hospitalizations, they're, they're, uh... You know, if you kind of did the math going back a year and said these are the actual statistics of COVID, people would be like, "Okay, no big deal, let's move on." It's a, it's a, it's a tough s- kind of, uh, virus. But because of the circumstances where we, we, we are kind of under these, these feelings that this is a fatal disease and could cause, uh, fatalities, um, those statistics don't matter. The fear is what matters, and people are gonna start to behave quite differently, I think, in the next few weeks.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I have a slightly different point of view here, but, um, I think, Freeberg, you're, you're... I think you're right in some respects, um, but I don't think it is gonna come from people. I don't think people... Uh, I think people are exhausted and they wanna go back to life as normal.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And I think this summer was a window into some amount of normalcy for a lot of us, and I don't think we really do want to go back. Um, and so I think what's, what's really going to happen is there's going to be essentially some form of class warfare. And instead of rich versus poor and left versus right, it's sort of between people who believe in science and then the, you know, ideologically dogmatic who refuse to get it. And that's gonna play itself out economically. I agree with you. There's going to be meaningful forms of economic discrimination against people who, um, are unnecessarily compounding risk for the rest of us who want to deal with it, ideally, touch wood, as a common cold, like David said, and move the fuck on. And if we are prevented from doing so because economic policy and healthcare policy has to constantly get re-rated for a cohort of people who could protect themselves and everybody else but chooses not to, there is going to be a real pushback on that. The second thing that I, I think is gonna happen is politicians proved that if you give them a window to seize power, they will do it. And I think what's really gonna happen in the fall is if there's even a small modicum of risk, which there will be, as we just talked about-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, it, it exists now, yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... I think it's the politicians that are gonna wanna jump all over this and say, "Okay, guys, you know, lockdown's here. You can't do this, you can't do that, closing schools and-"
- JCJason Calacanis
So literally, Gavin Newsom just did the big grand reopening, California's back. You could see him locking it back up in September.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Oh, that's the best way to... It's the best way to snuff out any chance of a, of the recall going against him is that even if you were angry, you're not gonna be allowed to-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... basically it'll be a massive form of voter suppression.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I think that- that- that would backfire on him.
- JCJason Calacanis
Number two is, by the way-
- DSDavid Sacks
That would backfire pretty bad.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
You saw the flip-flopping that he already did actually on schools, where the, the government of California basically said, "Hey, you know, we're gonna mandate a mask policy in the fall." And then Newsom came out because people freaked out and said, "Uh, actually, no. Each local municipality can figure it out based on, you know, what it, what it means for them." The point is, guys, um, Freeberg is right. These things aren't going away. We have a cohort of people who will continue to allow this thing to become worse than it has to be. And I think that there will be economic repercussions and discrimination against those people for that. And I think economically, we are going to take a step back because politicians will t- try to slow the economy down again.
- JCJason Calacanis
And, and there is definitely from the right, uh, not to get political here, but they've been pretty silent about...... encouraging people to get vaccinated and, um, you know, at CPAC and other places, people were cheering the anti-vax movement. Mitt Romney came out, uh, "We don't control conservative media figures so far as I know. Uh, at least I don't. That being said, I think it's an enormous error for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be taking vaccines. Look, the politiciz- politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly, moronic." Mitch McConnell came out and said, "As a polio victim myself when I was young, I've studied that disease. They took 70 years, 70 years to come up with two vaccines that finally ended the polio threat. As a result of Operation Warp Speed, we have not one, not two, but three highly effective vaccines. So I'm perplexed by the difficulty we're having finishing the job."
- DFDavid Friedberg
This is where you can expect the politically correct companies to act first, because there, the woke mob will force some action on this issue, whether you like it or not, but this is, this is where the next petition will come from Apple, where the two or 3,000 employees who are vaccinated, et cetera, who have people with, you know, um, people in their households with, with, uh-
- JCJason Calacanis
Compromised. Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... who are immunologically suppressed-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- 40:09 – 47:29
Billionaire Space Race: Addressing the negativity, benefits of innovators
- JCJason Calacanis
All right, do we wanna move on to the billionaire space race?
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah, I think that's positive news.
- JCJason Calacanis
This company Go- uh, what's it called? Virgin Galactic? There's a company called Virgin Galactic and-
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
... they take people to space. It's $200,000. Stock seems to be doing pretty well. Um, anybody have thoughts on Richard Branson getting to space? I don't know, let's just randomly go to somebody. Chemath?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
No congratul- in, in all seriousness, congratulations.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I cried. Nad and I-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Start the SEC transcript public-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
- DFDavid Friedberg
... statement. Here we go.
- DSDavid Sacks
(laughs) You know me. (laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No, Nad, Nad and I, uh, watched it together.
- JCJason Calacanis
You cried?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
And it was emotional. Uh, and it's emotional because you know, I mean, being a little bit more on the inside, how hard they worked. I mean, uh, we've all been there where we're all toiling in obscurity, where there are moments where everybody thinks that what you're doing either is crazy or isn't gonna work or is gonna fail. And there's a moment where you just have to push through it, right? And find people that believe in you. I think I came in very late to that, but I had the opportunity to find these incredible people, believe in them, help them, give them capital, which was essentially oxygen, right? That's oxygen for a company. And then to see them achieve it, it felt so special to be a part of it. So yeah, I mean, I was really emotional. Um, and it was, it was beautiful. Um, so I, I don't know. I think this is the beginning of the beginning. Um, I tweeted this out, but basically, if you think about... And there's other stuff that we can't talk about with some other companies that we are all involved in, David and I particularly, but here's the point, guys. Between sending people and making us an interplanetary species by creating pervasive internet access, and by enabling us to safely and reliably transport people either point-to-point, sub-orbitally, or basically into space, we are completely re-imagining how the human race can work. And I think that's incredible. And to be a part of that is really special. There was a lot of people who got very negative on Twitter, I noticed. There was a lot of people that said-
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs) Bezos.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... "Oh well," you know, no, like, you know, "Maybe now we can deal with, I don't know, child hunger," or, you know, "Hey, why are all these billionaires doing this, that, or the other?" And I took a step back and I thought, "My gosh, A, people are incr- there's a small virulent cohort of people that are incredibly negative, and B, doesn't even know what they're talking about." Because you're talking about issues of state responsibility and confusing it for what private citizens are doing to advance a set of technologies that I think have broad appeal. So, those are my thoughts. I mean, I was... I- I- I watched every minute of it and I thought it was incredible.
- DSDavid Sacks
Just to add to that, um, yeah, I wanna, I wanna take the part that all the naysayers and, and the negativity, I mean, Chemath is right. All the very online people immediately came out attacking...... this extraordinary accomplishment, an act of bravery by Branson. I mean, this is a billionaire, he doesn't need to be risking his life (laughs) launching himself into space. I mean, this is, uh, a courageous act. You know, he's putting his, his, um, his life where his mouth is. And you had all these very online people, but you had one CNN commentator basically said this was bad for the environment. You had, uh, another one saying that, uh, calling him a tax cheat. Uh, then there was another whiner who said, "What about all the starving children in the world?" I mean, it just went on and on like this and, uh, Mike Solana had a pretty funny tweet summing up the sort of the left's, um, argument, uh, the, uh, thusly. He said, number one, this is their argument according to Solana, one, money is evil. Two, therefore people with money are evil. Three, therefore things people with money care about, evil. I mean, that is basically the level of sophistication-
- JCJason Calacanis
Everybody stops being evil.
- DSDavid Sacks
... of, of the argument that's being made. It's, it's, that, that's the argument that the left is making.
- JCJason Calacanis
Everybody's a Bond villain.
- DSDavid Sacks
Right. But here, here's the problem is that, first of all, we do get tremendous benefits out of these innovators who are pushing the boundaries of science and technology and engineering. Um, you know, Branson actually went on Stephen Colbert's show and defended it. He said, he said, "Listen, uh, I think they're not fully..." This is Branson, he said, "I think they're not fully educated to what space does for Earth, is connecting the billions of people who are not connected, uh, down here." He said, "Every single spaceship that we've sent, putting satellites up there, monitoring different things around the world, like the degradation of rainforests, monitoring food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change, these things are essential for us back on Earth, so we need more spaceships going up to space, not less." So, you know, they're really just kind of ignorant about the benefits of technology. And what do they wanna do with the money anyway? You know, we've got all the... Yes, we do have all these problems on Earth, but so many of our problems are not a problem of underfunding. We have tons of money going to the problem of homelessness in California. It just keeps getting worse because we have the wrong approach. We have v- on education, we have very, very-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
We have the wrong ideas.
- DSDavid Sacks
... we have the wrong ideas.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
We have the wrong organization. We have the wrong execution. Fix the operating details. It's not a money issue.
- DSDavid Sacks
E- exactly. Take education in California. We have very high levels of per-pupil spending and our test scores keep going down. Why? Because we have unions controlling the schools. There's no competition or choice.
- JCJason Calacanis
Don't worry, David. We're getting rid of testing. (laughs) We, we've eliminated testing. We solved that problem. (laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
We spend more as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other Western country in the world, yet the life expectancy of white men, which is basically the top of the pyramid of healthcare, is now sub 80 years old. What is going on? Well, if all of these-
- JCJason Calacanis
Execution.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
... if all of these negative naysayers could actually just get into the arena and try to do something.
- 47:29 – 1:04:07
Investments in space, parallels to 1500's maritime shipping, potential for global broadband
- JCJason Calacanis
- DFDavid Friedberg
If you guys look, uh, I was gonna send these statistics earlier, but if you look at the amount of venture capital money that's gone into, um, uh, into, uh, private space companies, space technology companies, I think it was a few hundred million dollars, call it $300 to $400 million pretty consistently from 2011 through 2014. Pretty flat. And then in 2015, I think this is when SpaceX started to kind of create a lot of momentum and hype that private companies can actually build businesses, um, uh, in, in kind of call it the space industry. The number jumped to 3 billion a year, and then it was a little over 3.5 billion in '16, and then it jumped to f- almost 5 billion in '17. It was a little bit down in '18. 2020, it's climbed to almost 10 billion. And in Q1 of this year, I think we're at 2 billion of venture capital money going into private space companies. So there's clearly, um, a great deal of momentum in this industry. The question is always what's the market at the end? And so if you break out how do these companies make money, one is to provide services to governments. You know, launch services and, and taking people to, to the space station and what have you. And SpaceX has obviously built a tremendous business in that. There, there has been, obviously, a lot of interest in tourism, um, and I think it's, uh, you know, we're seeing this first breakthrough with, um, with Virgin Galactic and we're gonna find out over the next couple of years, is there a tourism market? Um, historically, there's been interest in a market for, um, uh, visual, uh, satellites but, you know, if you look at some of the financials of companies like Planet Labs, they did a few acquisitions in space imaging, and the revenue hasn't really taken off there.Uh, and then mining was always this other question is can we go out and mine, you know, rare minerals from space? And that one is just, you know, if you do the math on it, it's so far away, it's impossible to kind of model. Um, so I think over the next, and- and then finally it's communications. And communications are cheaper to run on Earth if you're in cities versus, you know, the- the- the SpaceX model is to reach rural, rural areas that it's gonna be, uh, more affordable to do this through space. Um, and so, you know, there's, um, there's obviously a ton of momentum and a ton of interest in, uh, in private companies getting to space. Everyone right now it seems is trying to figure out what's the market, right? What's the- how big is the market? How big is the business? And- and, you know, how quickly can you actually see that capital turn around into real revenue? Um, so, you know, th- th- there's this kind of market question that I think is still outstanding. I- in terms of, you know, the opportunity, uh, i- i- i- if you go back to like the 15th century, I think something like 60 to 70% of ships, maritime (laughs) tr- travel, uh, you know, uh, got into shipwrecks (laughs) , you know, the, uh, you know, that's around when, um, you know, we sailed across the Atlantic or the- the Spanish sailed across the Atlantic or funded
- JCJason Calacanis
No, or they-
- DFDavid Friedberg
... or they disappeared. Yeah. Or they disappeared. I mean, they basically crashed. It didn't work.
- JCJason Calacanis
It was a one-way trip (laughs) , sometimes to the bottom of the ocean.
- DFDavid Friedberg
If you were sitting in Spain in 1450 and someone said, "Hey, these ships, it's gonna be a great business. We're gonna build lots of ships and we're gonna go out, maybe we'll get trade routes going, maybe we'll discover new land, maybe we'll make money, maybe we'll take people on trips on these ships," you would be like, "This is crazy. Half the people are dying. There's no market on the other side." So, you know, w- we are in that kind of-
- JCJason Calacanis
And you would have been totally wrong.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, and you are in that 15th century moment right now with the space industry.
- JCJason Calacanis
Great analogy.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Now, would anyone in the space, would anyone in the ship business in the 15th century have been able to predict Carnival Cruise Lines or been able to predict Evergreen Ships taking stuff from China to America with these f- huge-
- JCJason Calacanis
No.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... shipping crates? Would anyone have been able to predict r- um, you know, uh, uh, going down to the bottom of the Atlantic? I mean, like all of the technology and the entire industry that kind of came out of that, um, uh, you know, that- that- that set of pioneering activity in the 15th century transformed the planet, transformed the economy, uh, transformed humanity. And, um, you know, w- it's very, it's very hard, it's very hard to sit here today and say, "Hey, I know where space is go- where the space industry is going. I know what's gonna be possible." But I can tell you that if history is any predictor of the future, um, you know, this pioneering work that's going on, which is burning tons of money and- and everyone's kind of questioning whether there's businesses here, it could transform our species once again. So, um, yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
David, d- your 15th, uh, century shipping, uh, example is so beautiful. Uh, three things that came out of that, which I think we all value. Uh, one, insurance. Uh, two, tort law. And carry. Exactly. Um, and three was basically how they did risk management so that, you know, each ship would take a little piece of everybody else's cargo so that some of the cargo would always get to-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Th- marketplaces emerged. Lloyds of London came about.
- JCJason Calacanis
Marketplaces. Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, Lloyds of London-
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
... emerged because of the- the maritime insurance that was required and the- and almost all P&C insurance can trace its roots back to maritime insurance during that- that era.
- JCJason Calacanis
Well-
- DFDavid Friedberg
And so- so these- these ancillary industries that emerged were, like, surprising, right?
- JCJason Calacanis
It's almost business models emerged because you had to figure out how you do the arbitrage here, and carry is the perfect example. People don't understand that venture capital carry, we get 20% of the profits, was designed so that people with ships, the captain would get to say, "We get 20% of whatever makes it there." Now you're aligned. Whatever makes it there, you get 20% of. "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through that storm and I'm gonna try to get it there." And we don't, there's so many unknowns. But just looking at the one thing, you know, Starlink, um, I was doing a little research today about internet penetration. We've got, you know, close to five billion people on the internet now, but a very small number of them are on broadband. It's like 20%, 30%, somewhere in that number. It's hard- it's hard to get an exact number there. But if you think about what's gonna happen to humanity, we're talking about billions of people who did not have access to broadband, and they are going to go from not having... You know, if you- if you think about what we went through in the West when the internet first came out and we got our first broadband connections, you know, defined as like DSL or whatever, we had libraries, we had books, we had colleges, we had sh- stores everywhere, Barnes & Nobles. So the internet was m- unbelievably transformative, but we were in a modern society. Now you go to the developing world and they're gonna go from, you know, not even having running water in some cases in their homes or electricity or, you know, variable, to having broadband. And they're gonna have access to YouTube circa 2022, 2023. They're gonna have access to, you know, MIT Courseware or brilliant.org and all of this information and shopping. We're gonna take a billion or two billion people and give them broadband instantly within a decade. This is gonna change the- the face of the planet. I think that that's the revolution. Uh, and- and it's not just Starlink doing it. There's like three competitors to Starlink. Obviously Starlink's got the biggest lead.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah, before SpaceX doing this and- and- and- and there were others, there was a company called O3B. Uh, it was, uh, stood for other three billion, and they had raised a ton of money to do this. I just, I- I, by the way, I just want to speak to like a trend that we've seen and- and also speak to the- (laughs) the quality of Elon's leadership. Um, so many companies have tried this. Google talked about it for years, which is how do you connect-
- JCJason Calacanis
Project Loon. Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Well, Project Loon was a follow-on to what we talked about early on at Google, which was putting up satellites. And ultimately, Google had a satellite program that was killed in favor of buying a company called Skybox. And Skybox was this coastal ventures backed startup that was trying to make a smaller scale startup. And if you guys will remember, around the early 2010s, um, there were a bunch of startups that emerged that were all about building small scale-... um, uh, satellites that could go up into low earth orbit and do things like imaging and communications. And a bunch of these companies were banking on the fact that the cost per kilogram to get your payload into space was declining pretty precipitously. So they were like, "Let's make super cheap commodity, you know, space imaging or space communication boxes, put them in space, and after a couple of years they'll fall out of or- orbit and burn up. But it doesn't matter. If we can get enough use out of them and they cost so little to put into space and they cost so little to make, let's put hundreds of them up." So there's a company called Planet Labs, um, that, that does this, that's, uh, I think going public via SPAC now. They... again, they've ch- they've been challenged with building the business in imaging, but there was... uh, Google bought a company for I think half a billion dollars called Skybox trying to do this, which it was like imaging/comms and they had a bigger refrigerator-sized box that they were trying to put up. Ultimate- ultimately Google s- Google spun that out to, to Planet Labs and the whole thing kind of, you know, became imaging. But I, I, I just want to highlight that this has been a big trend for a while and it speaks to the quality of Elon (laughs) and his leadership because the fact that this guy did what 20 other, 30 other people have tried, companies have tried to do for the past decade or so and he said, "You know what, instead of just providing the, uh, the infrastructure to get all these devices into space, we're just gonna build the actual devices, get this thing up and just go crazy with it, ma- and put our capital into it." Um, and it's really impressive to see because it's such a no-brainer and people have been talking about this, this opportunity for over a decade and these guys just have absolutely rushed the field, um, and they could build an incredible business, uh, out of this. And, uh, you know-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
The two most important companies in satellite communications are Starlink and Swarm. Uh, and Swarm was a company that I seeded and Sachs did the Series A and the... if you talk to the founders of that company, you know, they'll, they'll give you this use case in, I think it was in two- 2014. Do you guys remember there was a, like a Malaysian Airlines flight that just disappeared?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Disappeared.
- DFDavid Friedberg
370.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
Yeah, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. And it was like 230, 240 people that passed away and the, the, the most, you know, indelible question that I remember from this was, um, we s- we couldn't track it. And I thought to myself, "How is that even possible? How do you s- how do you lose s- how do you lose a flight in the middle of the earth? It's not possible." It turns out it is because our internet coverage is so sad that it only covers small areas and it, it, it made obvious that like, you know, we should live in a world where there is absolutely pervasive internet access everywhere, every single little shred inch of the world should be covered and saturated. That should never happen. You know, the people should be able to have closure. They should be able to go and get that plane, recover the bodies, give them proper funeral. These are simple things, but they're human things that we should be doing as human beings, right?
- DFDavid Friedberg
Well, and just think about the IOT
- 1:04:07 – 1:13:14
Besties go to space, Bezos' cheap shot, Elon's support, Melvin Capital's tough first half of 2021
- JCJason Calacanis
on there yet.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Would any of you guys take the Richard Branson, um, uh, trip? Would you do the, uh, you know, like next week or, or two year- I guess at what point would you be comfortable taking it? ??? I'm sure you've take- you're, you're psyched now but like-
- JCJason Calacanis
I can answer for Sax. The answer's no.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
I'm 600 and, 600 and something, so.
- JCJason Calacanis
How many flights more would you wanna see? You would wanna do 10 more flights, 20 more flights?
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
No, I feel, I feel really confident that we know what we're doing. The, this flight was so critical because it was about figuring out what it was like to have passengers in the back and how they'd all behave when you had multiple folks and I think once that readout is done, and Richard apparently took a bunch of notes, um, so, you know, we'll, uh, we'll be starting commercial ops I think, uh, you know, the next two or three quarters, so.
- JCJason Calacanis
Wow. Yeah, I mean when you have-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Sax? (laughs)
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(laughs)
- JCJason Calacanis
Yeah, Sax.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Sax.
- DSDavid Sacks
Well, I mean, if, if I had a $500 million super yacht like Jeff Bezos, that's where I'd be hanging out. I don't think I'd be blasting-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
(laughs)
- DSDavid Sacks
I wouldn't be blasting myself into space. But, I mean, look, more power to him. I mean, they got, you know, they certainly, uh, have got guts-
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
He's doing both.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- CPChamath Palihapitiya
He's doing both.
- DSDavid Sacks
Yeah.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Jacob, would you do it?
- JCJason Calacanis
I, you know, I, my, my theory is with kids I kind of think differently about it, but if I was over 70 like Branson, certainly I would do it, yeah. I, I would have to have that conversation with my spouse and my kids and say, "You know, hey, this opp- opportunity exists. They've done, let's call it 100 flights." Uh, somewhere in that neighborhood I would, I think I would feel pretty comfortable doing it, but I, I would wanna check in with my-
- DSDavid Sacks
Mm-hmm.
- JCJason Calacanis
... my family and kids and see if we were all in sync on taking that leve- I, I stopped riding motorcycles as an example. I think that flying and space tourism in the next year or two will be, uh, safer than riding a motorcycle.
- DFDavid Friedberg
Mm-hmm.
- JCJason Calacanis
And then eventually it'll be safer than, you know, driving a car or something. It's, it's quite-
- DFDavid Friedberg
Yeah.
- JCJason Calacanis
... possible.
- DFDavid Friedberg
I was, I was watching a space show with my daughter, she's three years old, on the couch the other day, and then she, um, uh, she was like, "Oh, space, it looks so fun." And I'm like may- you know, I said, "Do you wanna go to space?" And she said, she looked back at me and she said, "I wanna go to space with you." And it made me cry and it was the first time I'd ever thought like, "Man, I, like-"
- JCJason Calacanis
First time you'd ever cried?
- DFDavid Friedberg
First time I'd ever cried.
- JCJason Calacanis
(laughs)
Episode duration: 1:18:46
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