Epstein Files Flop, State of the Market, Autonomous Robots, Trump's Gold Card, Friedberg on Jeopardy

1. 0:00 – 1:41

   Bestie intros

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      All right, everybody. Welcome back to the All-In Podcast. Our incredible comedian celebrity guest got sick at the last minute today and didn't make it. We won't say who it is, but my lord, when he comes on this show, you are gonna laugh your ass off because he's awesome.

   2. DSDavid Sacks0:15

      I like the comedians. I think that their takes on society and culture are pretty interesting, I think.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:19

      Do you think it will work in our format? What's your prediction here? We've never done it.

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:23

      I think the quality of the show is best when it's less just people doing takes and it's more the back and forth banter. So, yeah.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:29

      That's what I'm always trying to do is get the ball to go around the horn and get some real dialogue going here. But, uh, you know, sometimes people feel passionate. With me again this week on the All-In Podcast, David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya. My name is Jason Calacanis. You can follow me on x.com/jason. He's at Chamath and he's at Friedberg.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:50

      Why can't I- why can't I- why can't I make fun of you in the replies on Twitter anymore?

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:54

      Oh, because I- it's a very good question.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:56

      You blocked my ability to reply to you?

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:57

      No, what I did was my replies were so many MAGA lunatics and crypto scams that I had no choice but to, like... I had to do something because I would have like 500 replies to every single one.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:10

       (laughs)

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:11

       And I put it on subscription and I said, "If you want to reply, it's $3 a month now." 1500 lunatics signed up, so.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:18

       I did, I did so I could troll him.

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:20

       Just so you could troll me. And I thank you for the $3 every month. It's all going to charity.

   14. DFDavid Friedberg1:26

       We're going all in. Let your winners ride.

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:29

       Rain Man David Sacks.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg1:32

       I'm going all in. And I said we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya1:37

       Love you, man.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg1:38

       Queen of quinoa. I'm going all

2. 1:41 – 4:40

   Epstein files first release underwhelms

   1. DFDavid Friedberg1:41

      in.

   2. JCJason Calacanis1:41

      Do you want me to intro the show or get some warm up banter about Jeopardy! Or do you want to go right into Epstein?

   3. DSDavid Sacks1:46

      The letter from Pan to Cash is, is crazy. Dear Director Patel, before you came into office, I requested the full and complete files related to Jeffrey Epstein. In response to this request, I received approximately 200 pages of documents. Late yesterday, I learned from a source that the FBI field office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein. Despite my repeated requests, the FBI never disclosed the existence of these files. When you and I spoke yesterday, you were just as surprised as I was to learn this new information. By 8:00 AM tomorrow, February 28th, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, regardless of how such information was obtained. There will be no withholding or limitations to my or your access. My question to you guys is, do you think that this is much ado about nothing and that the FBI needs to have the discretion to be able to say no? Or do you think this is one of these things where you're not allowed to, uh, do what they're doing?

   4. JCJason Calacanis3:01

      I think it's above my pay grade. I don't know the law of, like, FBI investigations. And then what if they investigated a bunch of people, they were not guilty, and then they were in the files? Maybe they need to look at them before they do a document dump? Maybe there's informants in there. I'm trying to think of what happened with, like, the whistleblower papers from, um...

   5. DSDavid Sacks3:22

      This says something different. This doesn't say-

   6. JCJason Calacanis3:24

      Snowden, yeah.

   7. DSDavid Sacks3:24

      ..."Let's negotiate what we should release together so that we protect people." This says, "We're just gonna lie to you-"

   8. JCJason Calacanis3:31

      He didn't tell me about these things, yeah.

   9. DSDavid Sacks3:32

      "... We're gonna lie to you and tell you that, you know, here's, here's this person."

   10. JCJason Calacanis3:34

       That's her side to the story. Maybe they have another side. Maybe the FBI has a different side. We'd have to hear from them, right?

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya3:39

       I- is this just, like, people are intrigued by the gossip angle of it, or is it because they want to prosecute people for hurting people? Or is it because they want to cancel people and this is a nice opportunity to cancel? Like, what's, what's, what's the, uh-

   12. JCJason Calacanis3:52

       This, I think-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya3:53

       ... the, what's happening here?

   14. JCJason Calacanis3:53

       ... this is an interesting question, because this thing's been going on for 20 years. I think this actually has more to do with conspiracy theories and now the deep state. Like, is there a deep state cover-up, is the question.

   15. DSDavid Sacks4:03

       I think the question is, if the chain of command requests something, are you allowed to withhold it because you decide in your own judgment that the person above you doesn't deserve to know it? I think that's an important question.

   16. JCJason Calacanis4:18

       Yeah. The thing about the FBI is, the FBI can withhold information from the president, from other folks if there's an ongoing investigation, sources are, like, secret and they would be in jeopardy, and national security concerns I'm, I'm reading here, so.

   17. DSDavid Sacks4:34

       I'm very excited to see these next two days unfold.

   18. JCJason Calacanis4:36

       Listen, it's a breaking news story that we'll have more to say about it next week when we get the facts.

3. 4:40 – 14:22

   Friedberg recaps his experience on Celebrity Jeopardy!

   1. JCJason Calacanis4:40

      All right, it has been an amazing 24 hours for my guy, David Friedberg. I am so proud of you. If people don't know, David Friedberg was on (beep) , I'm sorry, Celebrity Jeopardy! this week, and he had-

   2. DSDavid Sacks4:56

      (laughs) What did you call it? What did you call it?

   3. JCJason Calacanis4:58

      ... a great performance. (laughs)

   4. CPChamath Palihapitiya4:59

      Jeopardy!? You can't say that.

   5. JCJason Calacanis5:01

      I can't say it. You're right. Bleep it out. Bleep it out.

   6. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:03

      Yeah.

   7. JCJason Calacanis5:04

      So you were on Celebrity, quote unquote, Jeopardy!

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:07

      Right. It shows you how much of A bar there is.

   9. JCJason Calacanis5:09

      The bar was pretty low.

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:09

       Pretty low.

   11. JCJason Calacanis5:09

       They're now inviting podcasters, apparently.

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:12

       Yeah.

   13. JCJason Calacanis5:12

       But Jeopardy!'s watched by, like, 10 million people every episode, right?

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:15

       Yeah, they have, like, a huge audience on regular Jeopardy! I think it's, like, nine million a night or something.

   15. JCJason Calacanis5:20

       (gasps)

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:20

       Or seven- Wow. ... seven to 9 million a night. Yeah.

   17. JCJason Calacanis5:22

       Great.

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:22

       But I think Celebrity Jeopardy!, because it's, like, later, it's got-

   19. JCJason Calacanis5:25

       Ah.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya5:25

       ... a smaller audience. But it's still, like, a couple million people watch this thing, which is crazy.

   21. JCJason Calacanis5:30

       So you were on, and for the last four or five months, we've all had to, like, bite our tongues. And you've been in a full-scale... I don't want to say panic, but you- you've been hand-wringing about your performance. And spoiler alert, Friedberg won. Not only did he win, he (beep) crushed it. I was, like, watching this. This was, like, better than watching the World Series of Poker or a Knicks-Warriors game for me. Here is my favorite moment, the All-In Call. As a tribute, he gets the daily double, and-

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:05

       I'm gonna go all in, Ken.

   23. NANarrator6:07

       Oh, okay.

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:08

       Yeah. Fuck it.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg6:08

       How dare you?

   26. NANarrator6:09

       $12,800 for Dave, but you have to be correct in African Geography. Known for its snows, this Tanzanian peak is both Africa's highest and the world's tallest freestanding mountain.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya6:21

       What is Mount Kilimanjaro?

   28. NANarrator6:22

       That is correct. $12,800 now.

   29. JCJason Calacanis6:24

       Yeah. (laughs) What did you think of that moment, Shuman? He goes all in. And these people, they think that they're gonna get Friedberg by giving him a question about Africa, not knowing that he's African American.

   30. DFDavid Friedberg6:36

       (laughs)
4. 14:22 – 21:06

   State of autonomous robots

   1. DSDavid Sacks14:22

      Adcock's tweet?

   2. JCJason Calacanis14:22

      No. What did he say?

   3. DSDavid Sacks14:23

      Friend of the pod, Brett Adcock, who's the CEO and founder of Figure, he just announced today that he's moved his timelines up by two years. He's going to be-

   4. JCJason Calacanis14:33

      Two years?

   5. DSDavid Sacks14:33

      ... beta testing robots in the home by, by the middle to end of this year.

   6. JCJason Calacanis14:38

      That's crazy.

   7. DSDavid Sacks14:39

      Crazy. Crazy.

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya14:41

      Are you an investor in his company?

   9. DSDavid Sacks14:43

      I don't talk about my investments, but in this case, no.

   10. JCJason Calacanis14:46

       No disclosures here.

   11. DSDavid Sacks14:47

       But in this case, no, I'm not an investor.

   12. JCJason Calacanis14:51

       So we're not talking a book here. I do think Optimus and this Figure and the other, there's about a dozen of these doing it credibly. If they can make these for, what, Chamath, 20 grand, when do you think it becomes something a middle class household, you know, dual income household would buy one of these? Five years from now?

   13. DSDavid Sacks15:09

       So-

   14. JCJason Calacanis15:09

       Ten years from now? Like, how, how probable could they be?

   15. DSDavid Sacks15:12

       Last week... Well, I think the issue is bounded by two things. One is that I'm not sure that the generalized AI is good enough yet. And what he did was he had a deal with OpenAI, which he pretty publicly canceled a few weeks ago.

   16. JCJason Calacanis15:28

       Hmm.

   17. DSDavid Sacks15:29

       And he announced his own model. And I don't know the details of it to know whether he rolled it himself or this is just, like, taking some open source-based model and iterating from it. But I think the model is not perfect yet to be general purpose. That's one. And then the second is a practical issue with the robots, which is that the actuators themselves are good, but they're not great. And you can see it in h- in the demo, where it's an incredible demo because it shows the value and the power of the model, where there's sort of this master-slave orientation that has to happen, where one model is actually doing most of the computation, and the second model and the second robot is then feeding off of it. And the demo that they do, Nick, you can probably find the video, is of them sorting a bag of groceries for the first time, totally unsupervised, which, and it's, it's an incredibly cool demo.

   18. JCJason Calacanis16:24

       It's a cool demo.

   19. DSDavid Sacks16:25

       The thing that, that you notice, though, is that the actuators are good, they're not great. And so the physical dexterity is still relatively limited. And I think that that doesn't allow these robots to be super functional in the next couple of years. But when they get that figured out, then I think it could be really useful, because if you have a robot like this that could sort the groceries, make food, do the laundry, mow the lawn, so to speak, it just requires a level of dexterity that's not yet totally possible. But see, in this example, what you're seeing are the two robots basically figuring out how to communicate semantically between the robots. And that's incredibly powerful, and it's yet another sort of breakthrough that we need. So I don't know, we're probably, like, a couple years away. But see, look at the dexterity there. He's taking the Pepperidge Farms and feels like he's crushing the Pepperidge Farms, or she, or whatever you call this robot.

   20. JCJason Calacanis17:13

       They, them.

   21. DSDavid Sacks17:14

       They.

   22. JCJason Calacanis17:14

       Please don't misgender the robot.

   23. DSDavid Sacks17:16

       But it's, it's really incredible. They're figuring... The, the coolest part of this demo, by the way, which I loved, was they take an apple, and then the second robot figures out that it should go in the fruit bowl.

   24. JCJason Calacanis17:28

       Hmm.

   25. DSDavid Sacks17:28

       Pushes the fruit bowl to the first robot, and then the first robot-

   26. JCJason Calacanis17:30

       (laughs) Oh, that's cool. There it is.

   27. DSDavid Sacks17:33

       But that level of semantic awareness and understanding between two models working dependently is very cool. Look at that. That's very cool.

   28. JCJason Calacanis17:43

       They're collaborating with each other. It makes total sense. I can tell you, here on the ranch, I would love to have an all-purpose robot going out there and using the weed whacker and, and trimming the, the, the bushes and the hedges and getting me wood and collecting chicken eggs. Like, there's a million things they could do on a ranch, it'd be immediately applicable for ranch work. And if they are 24 hours a day, it doesn't matter if they go slow. But I, I think this is the category people are sleeping on. And I, I don't know who on the, on our prediction show said this will be the year of robots, but it's been, this is the year of robots for 30 years (laughs) in the industry. And it does feel like this is it. Freeberg, uh, you sticking with your prediction, I assume? Yeah.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya18:21

       I am, yeah.

   30. JCJason Calacanis18:23

       I think it's also, it's not just this kind of dexterous automation, but I do think drones, autonomous vehicles, uh, I'd put them all in the same category where they're-
5. 21:06 – 29:12

   Comparing annual reports from Stripe and Adyen; Stripe's network effects, stablecoin infra, and the pace of AI company building

   1. JCJason Calacanis21:06

      morels.

   2. DSDavid Sacks21:06

      Let's talk about Stripe. I thought the- the report was really good.

   3. JCJason Calacanis21:10

      We had the Collison brothers on last week, they crushed it. Great job to them. And then, um, here is a quick summary. So, uh, in terms of processing, volume, Adyen, 1.34 trillion; Stripe at 1.4 trillion. I mean, that's incredible that they're both in the-

   4. DSDavid Sacks21:25

      Yeah.

   5. JCJason Calacanis21:25

      ... almost the same exact space. One's growing 33%, Stripe's growing 38%. Valuation, Adyen, 56, they're public; Stripe, private, 91.5 billion, I guess that's the private market premium. Employee count, very interesting here 'cause since we've been talking about, uh, Jamie Dimon's, uh, rant last week, Adyen, 4.300, Stripe, over 8,000. And, uh, both are profitable. Adyen's got a billy in EBITDA, which is extraordinary, but Stripe has a higher margin. What's your take on a tale of two cities here?

   6. DSDavid Sacks21:55

      I thought there was three takeaways. The first takeaway for me was, the value of Stripe's ecosystem is- is probably underappreciated. I think Patrick mentioned it, but he just kind of said it as a passing fact and none of us picked up on it, but in the report, they talk about all the additional products that they're able to build around core payments, and one of them was the billing product. It's half a billion dollars a year of ARR.

   7. JCJason Calacanis22:19

      Hm.

   8. DSDavid Sacks22:19

      That's just incredible. And I think if they figure out network effects inside of the Stripe ecosystem, that's i- interesting. So, that's first, which is the hub and spoke of payments being at the center of it and all of these other incremental services. I think that that's really interesting and underappreciated for Stripe. That probably speaks to why there's such a difference in valuation, because Adyen has less of that ecosystem, or at least it's not nearly as well described maybe as Stripe's is. That's number one. Second is, I go back to what I've been saying for a while now, but the- the rise of these stable coins is really interesting.

   9. JCJason Calacanis22:51

      Hm.

   10. DSDavid Sacks22:53

       The stable coin infrastructure globally, the push for a bunch of these national governments to embrace them inside of India, inside of Brazil. Slowly it's happening inside of the United States. So I think that that was really interesting. And then the third takeaway, Nick, I sent you this tweet, was just the- the nature of the AI ecosystem relative to the rest of SaaS. And what this is, was from Stripe's report, which showed the time to get to five million of annualized revenue, and the average SaaS company took 37 months. And by 2024, the top 100 AI companies got there in 24 months.

   11. JCJason Calacanis23:40

       I mean, that's efficiency in the market, right? I mean, that's why we're all looking at AI saying, "We could see a lot of our economic issues come from growth, and the growth is very clear." You can do more with less, and you can generate more revenue with AI. So it's- it's pretty clear, the trend. Yeah, Chamath?

   12. DSDavid Sacks23:57

       I think it's really clear. I mean, I can give you a little factoid from AD90, you know, we got to five million of revenue in three months.

   13. JCJason Calacanis24:06

       Hm.

   14. DSDavid Sacks24:07

       Really crazy.

   15. JCJason Calacanis24:08

       Couple of wows in there, yeah. Couple of big ones.

   16. DSDavid Sacks24:10

       Yeah. And so, it's just a very different selling motion than- than I've historically seen, where the ROI is just so obvious in terms of the efficiency that it creates and the cost savings you can generate relative to traditional enterprise software. It's a more straightforward sale.... the ROI is clearer, the revenue is bigger-

   17. JCJason Calacanis24:34

       Mm-hmm.

   18. DSDavid Sacks24:34

       ... it happens faster.

   19. JCJason Calacanis24:36

       Yeah.

   20. DSDavid Sacks24:36

       So-

   21. JCJason Calacanis24:37

       There's also a s- I don't know if you're seeing it, but there's a sense of urgency in the market right now. People feel like they have to adopt this new technology fast because there's competition, because the gains are so clear, because in a slowing economy, this is maybe a way to accelerate revenue.

   22. DSDavid Sacks24:53

       I'll be honest with you, at least with the, our 80, 90 customers, I haven't seen that yet. You know, we're in, I don't know, eight or nine segments of the economy, big segments of the economy. It's more still about the frustration that they have with what I would call the software industrial complex.

   23. JCJason Calacanis25:10

       Ah.

   24. DSDavid Sacks25:10

       There's a big... And you, you can see it with what's happening to Salesforce and other big companies, is that these renewal cycles are getting harder and harder to justify, and so people are willing to take some bets and see if there are different ways in dealing with this problem. And I think that's the real opportunity, is if you can find a repeatable pattern to help these companies replace that big software spend that they have-

   25. JCJason Calacanis25:40

       Yeah.

   26. DSDavid Sacks25:41

       ... that scales really quickly. And the only way to do that, really, is using AI in two ways, AI inside the machinery of what you're using yourself to make the things, right? So, those are things like Cursor and whatnot to just fully accelerate, and then AI within some s- very specific products that the customers actually need that also create efficiency. So, there's two different places, but th- the problem with using it in both of these two different places is in the first one, you can manage the errors.

   27. JCJason Calacanis26:09

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DSDavid Sacks26:09

       It's ver- it's very straightforward. At the end of the day, code either compiles or it doesn't. So, even if you're using something like Cursor, which is an incredible product, there are no errors at the end of it because the thing actually works or it doesn't.

   29. JCJason Calacanis26:20

       Mm-hmm.

   30. DSDavid Sacks26:20

       The problem is actually when you use these models in actual work. And if you're in a regulated environment particularly, it gets very complicated because if you generate a hallucination in a healthcare business and it causes a, you know, patient record to be incorrect, there are huge consequences there.
6. 29:12 – 49:07

   State of the market: stocks, tariffs, spending bill, the "great reset"

   1. JCJason Calacanis29:12

      All right, let's go through the market update here. A lot of people are trying to figure out, are we going to have a market collapse, a boom? Let's just look at some of the numbers and have a, uh, a first principle discussion here. S&P up almost 2%, uh, so far this year, NASDAQ 100 flat, DOW up 3%, so pretty good start to the year in those index numbers. But if you look at the Mag 7, some of them have s- had some serious compression. Tesla down 27%, I do think that they had a big Trump/Elon spike. Google down 10%, Amazon nine, Microsoft about 8%, Meta, Apple, NVIDIA were up to varying degrees. And then coming into our taping this week, Bitcoin down 15% over the last month. That, too, got the Trump bump. And then adding to all this confusion, unemployment is still at historic lows. We're, we're at close to 4%, and if you look at the deportations that were promised, they've been modest to start. Obviously, they're just getting started, they need some money to deport folks, but they've only been deporting 500 people to 1,000 a day, and we haven't heard many numbers about the last couple of weeks as Doge has been sort of the center of attention. So, you know, they'd have to get to two or 3,000 people a day to have low millions, let's say, Chamath, two or three million people deported for it to have any impact on unemployment.Finally, act three, and then we'll, we'll get everybody's feedback on this. CPI up 3% year over year. We had hi- dipped down to that nice 2% handle and, uh, now it's back a little bit. If you remember in September, it bottomed out around 2.4% just in time for the election. Interesting how that happened. That same month, the Fed cut 50 bps, then it cut another 25 in December and since inflation's been growing modestly but steadily, not insignificantly. So put it all together, Chamath, and what do you think? And then Friedberg, we'll go to you.

   2. DSDavid Sacks31:06

      I tend to be sort of in the Stevie Cohen camp. It's not like the bottom is gonna fall out, but there's, like, a lot of room for concern, I guess is the best way to put it. Um, Nick, I don't know if you can find that clip, that, at FII, but he had a very precise summary of how he saw the world. And I, I, I frankly just agreed with everything that he was saying. So he, he probably can say it better than I.

   3. GCGuest commentator31:29

      When you take a brew of tariffs, on top of that, we have slowing immigration. And in addition now, you have DOGE. I mean, that's austerity. We think growth is gonna slow to 1.5% from 2.5% in the second half. And so I'm actually pretty negative for the first time in a while. And it may only last a year or so, but it's definitely, I think the best gains have been had and, and it wouldn't surprise me to see a significant correction.

   4. DSDavid Sacks31:56

      I think a couple of very specific thoughts. The first is that you're starting to see this compression of the Mag 7 towards everybody else. So this is the forward PE of these guys. And so what you're starting to see is everybody else starting to capture back some of the ground. People are processing what the real upside of, of the Mag 7 is. Now, if you go to the other chart, what this starts to show you though is that Mag 7 is really priced to perfection.

   5. JCJason Calacanis32:25

      Hmm.

   6. DSDavid Sacks32:26

      And so you have to believe that the world kind of stays the way that it is. Otherwise, you're gonna have some amount of, of mean reversion. So I think the stock market on the margin is a little expensive and not particularly that attractive. Second, the bond market has basically said, "Okay, we are going to give you credit that DOGE is going to work and that tariffs are going to work." So we've had some pretty meaningful compression in the tenure, which I think is really interesting. I think it's very good for Besant and for Trump. And, and I think I've mentioned this before, but we gotta go in and, you know, refinance $10 trillion in the next six months. So you could see this thing maybe even get under 4% if we get s- a good string of data. The real problem, I think, though, is that if you look back and say, "What does this look like?" The example that I would give you guys is in 2010 in the United Kingdom, the deficit as a percentage of GDP was 10%. And the UK government embarked on a multi-year austerity plan. And they said, "We're gonna get the deficit as a percentage of GDP back in line."

   7. JCJason Calacanis33:43

      Mm.

   8. DSDavid Sacks33:43

      And ultimately, by 2016, it got to 3%, which is where we are trying to get to. And right now, we're a little bit under 7%. We're trying to get it to 3%. So it's interesting to ask, what happened? And there, the bond market gave the UK government a ton of credit so they kept rates relatively low and they brought them back from where they were. That seems like what's happening here.

   9. JCJason Calacanis34:10

      Yeah, I mean-

   10. DSDavid Sacks34:10

       The stock market, the stock market kind of went sideways to a little bit down. Let's see what happens here. But the real big thing is in the UK, all of this created tremendous dissatisfaction, and you had Brexit. So I think the question that I have is, if we go through a prolonged austerity program and the frustration amongst the American populous builds, what's the release valve? There, the release valve was voting to leave the EU. Here, it's not quite, it's not obvious to me what our release valve is.

   11. JCJason Calacanis34:45

       Well, electing Trump was step one, and I don't know if there's something even more populist than Trump, other than...

   12. DSDavid Sacks34:50

       No, I think, I, I think he is the mechanism of implementing the austerity. I think people want this austerity. Just the question is, what happens when the actual byproducts of that austerity are felt by people for six or seven years? I don't know what the answer is.

   13. JCJason Calacanis35:04

       Certainly, people are in favor of DOGE and downsizing the government more than I think anybody anticipated. People are, the statistics are showing and the polls are showing, Friedberg, that it's incredibly popular. When you look at this, I don't wanna say conflicting, but it's a lot of different conflicting data here as to what's going on. What do you, what do you see in the numbers here? And, and what does your instinct tell you? Because s- part of this, I think, is getting used to Trump again, right? Like, he says a lot of stuff. Some of them are scary, some of them are just trolling, and everything in between. So w- what are your thoughts here? Are markets just adjusting to the, the new, uh, the new team back in town?

   14. CPChamath Palihapitiya35:48

       The big question in the Trump actions is around tariffs versus the tax cuts that are being proposed versus the, the spending cuts. Those are kind of the three levers. And there's a very serious sensitivity to the economic outlook for growth and inflation as a function of how far each of those three levers are pulled and how they relate to each other. Is Trump actually going to pull forward the cuts that he has talked about or that Elon's talked about? How real is that? There's a whole spectrum of opinions on that right now. On one end, you're looking at the House and the Senate reconciliation process for the budget proposals that they've put forth, and you're gonna scratch your head and be like, "Are we really cutting enough relative to what the economists and others are telling us we need to do?"Meanwhile, you've got Elon and Trump saying, "Hey, we're cutting, we're cutting, we're saving. We're going to get up to a trillion dollars a year." But that's not showing up necessarily in the budget. Is it showing up in the actions out of Doge, TBD? So there's a whole spectrum of opinions on the cuts. On the tariff side, there's a spectrum of, like, how far are these tariffs gonna go? You know, the United States, up until 18 something, was entirely tariff-driven in our federal government's revenue, and it was a way of being kind of protectionary to the industry here. And then over time, the tariffs rates came down and down and down as we introduced an income tax, which started, I think, at 3% right after the Civil War and went to 5% for high income earners. And then, obviously, in the 20th century, that's totally flipped. Now we have, like, no tariffs and a 50% income tax for the highest bracket. So can we actually revert back to a tariff-driven income model for the federal government? And what is the economic effect on growth for corporate America in that world where taxes get cut for the companies and for individuals, but we make all of our money from global trade? Does the s- the, the increased cost of global trade hurt companies more than the benefit of paying fewer taxes, lower taxes? That's the big economic argument that's underway right now. And it's funny, it kind of seems to fall along political lines, believe it or not. Much (laughs) like everything else, you know?

   15. JCJason Calacanis37:56

       (laughs) Shocked.

   16. CPChamath Palihapitiya37:57

       Like e- economists that, uh, that are Democratic-aligned are- Democratic-aligned-

   17. JCJason Calacanis38:01

       What's my party doing? Uh, I agree with that, yeah. (laughs)

   18. CPChamath Palihapitiya38:04

       Yeah, exactly. And so the Democrat-aligned economists will say, "The tariffs don't make sense. They reduce, uh, economic growth. They have a negative effect. We shouldn't be doing that." And then the Republican-aligned economists are saying, "The tax cuts will more than make up for the reduce, uh, the reduction from the tariffs." And that's the big unknown right now. Um, so I would say that the spending cuts, wide spectrum, the income tax cuts, big spectrum on what's actually gonna get done here, and then the tariffs, big spectrum on how far this is gonna go.

   19. JCJason Calacanis38:37

       Wild card, yeah.

   20. CPChamath Palihapitiya38:38

       And so those three things, you've got like three very wide ranges of things that all interplay, that ultimately determine inflation, economic growth, government deficits over the next decade, and we don't really have a clear picture yet of how those three things interplay. And they're all being hotly debated, and by the way, there's high variability. They're changing day to day. Every day, Trump's like, "This tariff, that tariff." Yesterday, there was a whole bunch of confusion on tariffs. Today, there's a whole bunch of, like, discussion on how far the tax cut extension's gonna go in the reconciliation process and on and on and on, so TBD.

   21. JCJason Calacanis39:10

       I encourage people to use my 72-hour rule (laughs) and look at what happens 72 hours after Trump says something spicy because, a lot of times, he's just, he says a lot of things and you, you gotta wait for it to land.

   22. CPChamath Palihapitiya39:20

       Well, it's not just Trump. I'll, I'll say, like, yeah, but the House and the Senate, they both put forward their, their budgets, right? And now they go through this reconciliation process, and there's a lot in there that leaves a lot to be desired. (laughs) If you're, if you're, uh, an absolute, like, you know, fiscal conservative and you're trying to get us to 3% deficit as a percent of GDP, you're like, "Wait a second, does this do enough?"

   23. JCJason Calacanis39:47

       And the tax cuts are 4.5 trillion over 10 years so, you know, that's approximately 450 billion a year. If you're trying to catch up, (laughs) how are we doing tax cuts, you know?

   24. CPChamath Palihapitiya39:55

       But, J Cal, remember, you can't make those statements as fact because a lot of those over-10-year projections are projections based on someone's estimate of the economic effect of the tax cuts. So there's also-

   25. JCJason Calacanis40:06

       Yes.

   26. CPChamath Palihapitiya40:06

       ... a lot of debate on that, which is, hey, some people are saying, "If we make these tax cuts, the economy will grow faster than this particular-"

   27. JCJason Calacanis40:14

       Much faster, yes.

   28. CPChamath Palihapitiya40:15

       "... th- the CBO economist will estimate," and the CBO economists are trying to be conservative. So there's a whole lot of debate going on right now on, like, how much is this really gonna cost? And people are like, "Oh my God, Trump is talking about raising our deficits so much over the next decade." But then there's a different point of view, which is, wait a second, if you assume that the economy will grow because of these cuts, then that's actually not true. And then there's all these wild cards around the golden visa card.

   29. JCJason Calacanis40:38

       Yeah, we're about to get to that, yeah.

   30. CPChamath Palihapitiya40:40

       Are the tariffs gonna be a trillion a year? Are they gonna be $2 trillion of revenue? No one really knows.
7. 49:07 – 56:19

   Trump's Gold Card

   1. DSDavid Sacks49:07

      love his... What do you guys think about the golden visa? I love that, the golden visa.

   2. JCJason Calacanis49:09

      Well, this is incredible because (laughs) I literally tweeted, like, six months ago, you know, "We should just sell citizenship for $500,000 a pop," and he added a zero.

   3. DSDavid Sacks49:20

      I'll give you a prediction.

   4. JCJason Calacanis49:21

      I love it.

   5. DSDavid Sacks49:21

      I'll give you a prediction. I will predict that within the next few months after this gets announced, you are going to hear about founders taking $5 million of secondary in a round-

   6. JCJason Calacanis49:34

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DSDavid Sacks49:34

      ... to make sure that if they are non-Americans, to get their visas.

   8. JCJason Calacanis49:38

      100%.

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:39

      Hey, uh, check out this prediction. Nick, we now have a poly market to trade. How many gold cards-

   10. JCJason Calacanis49:44

       Oh.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:44

       ... will Trump sell in 2025?

   12. JCJason Calacanis49:46

       Ooh, in poly market? Oh, that's a free-

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:48

       In poly market.

   14. JCJason Calacanis49:48

       Well done. I- I think-

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:50

       So-

   16. JCJason Calacanis49:50

       What is the- what is the bet?

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:52

       Well, so you either can have zero.

   18. JCJason Calacanis49:54

       Okay.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya49:55

       You can have one to 100, 100 to 1,000. Here's the, the different levels, 1,000-

   20. JCJason Calacanis50:01

       Oh, okay.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:01

       ... to 2,500, 2,500 to 5,000. So you can basically buy the level that you think. There's an 8% probability right now in poly market that by the end of 2025, there will be zero of these golden visas sold.

   22. JCJason Calacanis50:11

       Okay.

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:12

       25% chance of one to 100.

   24. JCJason Calacanis50:15

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:15

       17% chance of 100 to 1,000 and so on. The most probable level is actually 2,500 to 5,000, which is sitting at 29% probability right now.

   26. JCJason Calacanis50:25

       I'm taking the over.

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:25

       Yeah.

   28. JCJason Calacanis50:25

       I'm taking the o- I'm taking the way over.

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya50:27

       So what do you think then? But this is by the end of '25, J-Cal. So you gotta get... They basically have to get the program-

   30. JCJason Calacanis50:31

       Oh, okay, so they still have to get this done.
8. 56:19 – 1:06:57

   Sophisticated investor test, changing accreditation laws

   1. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:19

      your, your personal interest in accredited investing. What's the grift connection? I'm not sure I'm fully tracking the idea.

   2. JCJason Calacanis56:23

      It's not a grift connection. I feel like there's a bunch of people stealing money doing crypto scams.

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya56:29

      Uh-huh.

   4. JCJason Calacanis56:29

      And that all of that would be solved if people could just take a test to become an accredited investor, which is, like, currently 6 or 7% of the country, and then they would understand diversification and, you know, how different devices work, convertible debt, whatever. And if they did understand that, you could take people who are gambling in the stock market and allow them to invest in po- private market companies, and I believe that would create more... Th- this issue we brought up in the last segment, about poor people not being able to become rich people, and upward mobility. Upward mobility could be very easily-

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:07

      I, I-

   6. JCJason Calacanis57:07

      Hold on, let me finish my thought.

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:08

      Yeah.

   8. JCJason Calacanis57:08

      Upward mobility could be so much better if a person who's an Uber driver or an HR person working, you know, at a company, could put $500, $1,000, instead of betting on the Knicks or the Jets, God forbid, they could put that $500 into this new product or service they're using, LinkedIn, or this new product or service they're using. And then that would allow more startups to get created. There are so many people who contact me after reading my book and say, "I want to invest in startups." They can't. And I-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:35

      I will tell you-

   10. JCJason Calacanis57:36

       ... think they would be so much better off putting $100 or $500 into a startup than just wasting it at roulette tables.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:42

       Great. I'll take the opposite.

   12. JCJason Calacanis57:44

       Okay, go ahead.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:44

       And, and I'll tell you why. I think you're right, it would be great, but they should buy the S&P. They should buy the S&P index. Proven, scaled, audited, profitable-

   14. JCJason Calacanis57:55

       Yeah.

   15. CPChamath Palihapitiya57:55

       ... well-vetted, solid fiduciary responsibility with public board companies.

   16. JCJason Calacanis57:59

       Yep. And what will they learn from that?

   17. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:02

       If you do what you're tell- The problem is, most of these people, most people, even smart VCs, even intelligent people, make extraordinary mistakes in the startups that they back.

   18. JCJason Calacanis58:11

       Okay.

   19. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:11

       I don't think that we have a shortage of startups. I think we have a shortage of good startups. And I think that if you-

   20. JCJason Calacanis58:16

       Let me address this.

   21. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:17

       But if you, if you flood the market with capital, you're gonna see the same problem we've had with every venture capital cycle, or every private cycle, which is you get a whole bunch of bullshit that gets funded, that shouldn't get funded, that ends up eating a lot of peoples' money. And unfortunately, when people are less sophisticated and they enter the private investment markets, they're not gonna necessarily be left well off. They're gonna end up getting scammed in a different way. Someone's gonna show some-

   22. JCJason Calacanis58:41

       Let me give you the, um...

   23. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:42

       ... crazy fancy PowerPoint to them-

   24. JCJason Calacanis58:44

       Yeah, yeah. I-

   25. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:44

       ... take their money, and they're gonna get eaten up, which won't happen if they buy the S&P. Go ahead.

   26. JCJason Calacanis58:48

       Okay. Yeah. So, let me counter all that. They should buy the S&P, sure, and they can do that today, right? They can get a Robinhood account. They can buy-

   27. CPChamath Palihapitiya58:56

       Make 11% a year.

   28. JCJason Calacanis58:57

       Perfect. And that's the protectionist, paternalistic approach that we've had. What that doesn't do is, it makes them nice and safe, and then their thousand dollars becomes 1,070 next year and 1,150 the next year. Great, they learned one lesson, the rule of 72 and compounding interest. That's the only lesson they learn. But when you start betting on startups, you learn how entrepreneurship works, how product market fit works. And so, sure, put 80%-

   29. CPChamath Palihapitiya59:24

       Depends on the startups you get into.

   30. JCJason Calacanis59:24

       ... into an index fund and put 20% into investing in private companies. They would learn more. And when Uber wanted to give Uber drivers access to buying shares, they're not allowed to. And so the rich can buy whatever they want. They can make whatever bets they want. They can be in private equity, they can be in all these things that have the chance to 100x to 10x, but poor people can't. All I'm saying is, if they're educated and they take a course, let them do... Take a little bit of risk in an intelligent fashion and let them learn about entrepreneurship. I grew up blue-collar, and I didn't have exposure to how private for- company formation worked. I didn't understand any of this. I had to battle my way to learn all of it. If you had a course and people could go just as easily as they go to PrizePix, which I bet on every Knicks game, and they could go just as easily to PrizePix as they could go to Coinbase, as they could go to a private market company and invest, that would be better for upward mobility. So, you're right. People are gonna lose money, but they're gonna learn.
9. 1:06:57 – 1:14:06

   USPS, Bezos refocuses the WaPo's opinion page

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:06:57

      Hey, you know, I, I think talking about the US Postal Service is interesting. It turns out Trump is going to issue an executive order to dissolve the leadership of USPS, and the Postal Service is going postal about this in some ways, uh, not literally, but they're angry about it.And they wanna observe the, absorb the agency into the executive branch. Uh, just so you know, post office has been operating for 250 years. Trump plans to fire the governing board and place the agency under the control of ...

   2. DSDavid Sacks1:07:28

      Commerce.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:07:29

      Lipnic. Commerce. And for context, (laughs) US Postal Service has lost $10 billion last year on 80 billion in revenue. They can't figure out how to just make a simple profit margin or even break even. And it employs 635,000 workers. Think about that.

   4. DSDavid Sacks1:07:46

      By the way, Howard did an interview with Fox News yesterday-

   5. JCJason Calacanis1:07:49

      Oh, yeah.

   6. DSDavid Sacks1:07:49

      ... where he said one of the ideas that he went back to the President with was for the Postal Service to do the census, which would save four billion a year.

   7. JCJason Calacanis1:07:59

      Mm-hmm.

   8. DSDavid Sacks1:07:59

      Give him another idea, which is I think that non-farm payrolls and GDP, that data should be collected-

   9. JCJason Calacanis1:08:06

      Hm.

   10. DSDavid Sacks1:08:06

       ... by USPS as well.

   11. JCJason Calacanis1:08:07

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DSDavid Sacks1:08:07

       Because they touch every business, you can actually get ... Instead of sampling, with all this error and all of this craziness that we have, there has to be a way for then all of these feet on the street-

   13. JCJason Calacanis1:08:19

       Hm.

   14. DSDavid Sacks1:08:19

       ... to get us much more accurate information so that the markets can actually function properly. I am surprised that we don't see even more dramatic revisions, and that probably, again, is, like, errors on top of errors. I really don't trust-

   15. JCJason Calacanis1:08:35

       It's g-

   16. DSDavid Sacks1:08:35

       Like, you know, you showed the GDP data or you showed the unemployment rate, Jason.

   17. JCJason Calacanis1:08:38

       No, we all know this stuff is crazy.

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:08:40

       It's wrong. I just don't know how wrong it is.

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:08:42

       Yeah, and this is where Stripe's data might come in handy. Uh, I, I did a tweet about this, and it's one of the most (laughs) popular tweets for controversy. I got three and a half million views here without an Elon retweet or anything. I had a very simple concept here. Postal Service goes down to one time a week. Easy peasy. Once a week, there's nothing coming in the Po- US Postal Service that's that important. Two, all citizens starting next year have to opt in to getting postal mail by paying $1 a year, so you gotta sign up for it, you gotta give them a credit card or something. I'm thinking 80% of people don't even bother because it's all flyers and garbage anyway. And what people don't know, 'cause I was in the magazine business and I knew all about this, we had a magazine rate, a media rate, and all these marketers have ... They're subsidized. So, this is the ultimate marketing and publishing grift. Magazines, newspapers, anybody, uh, publications, advertisers, catalogs, they pay nothing and I think they should just double or triple the rate or remove any discounts, uh, and then take all those buildings, Chamath, put them into the, uh, new sovereign wealth fund, redeploy the buildings, get some money out of that, give every postal worker two-year severance or, you know, whatever, graduate it down full, full-year severance, half-year severance, quarter-year severance, while you retrain them, and, uh, just let the private markets handle this. What do you think, Chamath, of my suggestions?

   20. DSDavid Sacks1:10:00

       There was a tweet from this woman who got leaked some data-

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:10:02

       Uh-huh.

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:10:03

       ... from one of her friends or colleagues in the government where they broke down I think seven or eight leases and real estate things that were happening inside of, I think it was Veterans Affairs maybe. The numbers are just astounding.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:10:17

       Yeah. Half the office space is not being used.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:10:20

       It's stunning.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:10:20

       The other half is being under-utilized. It's bonkers.

   26. DSDavid Sacks1:10:22

       Bonkers.

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:10:23

       They're gonna be able to sell 75% of this stuff. So anyway, you know, don't blame me here, but I think it's, like, a really good opportunity. Our guy Jeff Bezos, come on the pod. Jeff, sit in the, uh, Sachs chair one time. That'd be fun to have him on. He's making some big changes at the Washington Post. He's lost a fortune running this thing, and, um, it seems like he's getting engaged and in founder mode, dare I say. He, uh, posted to his X account and he emailed everybody that the editorial page is gonna be run differently. He said, uh, that while newspapers once had a mandate to publish opinions from the broadest possible spectrum, the internet now mostly covers that. He said, "I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion." So, he's gonna focus on those two pillars, personal liberties and free markets. This seems awesome, and I, I could get into why it's brilliant on a publication basis, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are with him getting more engaged with the publication that he was incredibly hands-off with.

   28. DSDavid Sacks1:11:28

       I was a little surprised that he wrote this. I, I, I think that if you wanna write about personal liberty, one of the tenets of personal liberty is free speech, but he's effectively said that certain opinions aren't allowed anymore. I don't think that that's the solution to the Washington Post. So, I, all I think it does is it polarizes the readership even more. I looked-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:11:50

       Yeah.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:11:51

       ... inside of Google Trends. The overwhelming majority of WaPo readers are in, obviously Washington DC and then Maryland and Virginia, which are the two surrounding states. So, I think it's very much a beltway paper. I think he's trying to have a direct influence on the ideas that folks inside the beltway read. And so inasmuch as he's the owner, he's allowed to do it. But I wasn't a fan of that idea because I think, I think the Elon plan is much better. Here's a fire hose. Go at it. You have to find the people. Despite all the conspiracy theories, I don't think he suppresses free speech in the least. In fact, I think it's a literal free-for-all inside of X.

Episode duration: 1:15:14