Fixing the American Dream with Andrew Schulz

1. 0:00 – 3:29

   The Besties intro Andrew Schulz!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, The All-In Podcast. And, uh, you can subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, yada, yada. You know the drill. We're gonna go to Miami for an epic F1 weekend. All-In Podcast live on stage, Saturday, May 3rd. Couple special guests. Go to allin.com/events to buy a ticket, and we're really excited today because for the first time in All-In history, we have a comedian. We have somebody talented on the program.

   2. DFDavid Friedberg0:31

      Ain't that the truth.

   3. JCJason Calacanis0:32

      You know them.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg0:32

      Ain't that the truth.

   5. JCJason Calacanis0:33

      Ain't that the truth.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg0:33

      Real comedian.

   7. JCJason Calacanis0:34

      And-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg0:34

      Someone that knows how to make good jokes.

   9. JCJason Calacanis0:35

      All right.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg0:36

       It's true. Yeah.

   11. JCJason Calacanis0:36

       Andrew Sch- I think, feel like that was a dig to me, but okay. Andrew Schulz is here. He's joining us.

   12. ASAndrew Schulz0:40

       How are we doing, boys? Thank you for having me.

   13. JCJason Calacanis0:42

       Schulz, pleasure. You just, you gotta, you're on heater right now. You took time to come on the All-In pod. Thank you for doing that.

   14. ASAndrew Schulz0:49

       Of course.

   15. JCJason Calacanis0:50

       Your Netflix special-

   16. ASAndrew Schulz0:52

       Yes.

   17. JCJason Calacanis0:52

       ... is crushing it. Top 10 around the world.

   18. ASAndrew Schulz0:54

       Yeah.

   19. JCJason Calacanis0:54

       It's called LIFE.

   20. ASAndrew Schulz0:55

       Yeah, yeah, pretty cool.

   21. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       L-I-F-E.

   22. ASAndrew Schulz0:57

       Pretty cool. (laughs)

   23. JCJason Calacanis0:58

       It's about your low sperm count. Tell us that.

   24. ASAndrew Schulz1:00

       Yeah, I, I am the face of shitty sperm.

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:03

       Hm.

   26. ASAndrew Schulz1:04

       So-

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:04

       Which, that's kinda like crazy because you've got a mustache of a '70s porn star. How is he fucking you?

   28. ASAndrew Schulz1:09

       I think I'm overcompensating, you know? I think-

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:11

       Is that what it is?

   30. ASAndrew Schulz1:11

       ... I gotta trick people with the mustache when in reality, yeah, yeah, the balls are just-
2. 3:29 – 9:35

   Friedberg hits a quick Science Corner on the future of fertility

   1. ASAndrew Schulz3:29

   2. DFDavid Friedberg3:29

      Yeah. By the way, you guys wanna hear a quick science corner? So, you know how we talked about Yamanaka factors?

   3. JCJason Calacanis3:34

      There is a roaring yes in the background.

   4. ASAndrew Schulz3:35

      (laughs)

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya3:35

      (laughs)

   6. DFDavid Friedberg3:36

      You're gonna laugh, you're gonna-

   7. JCJason Calacanis3:38

      Wow.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg3:39

      He's like, "Yeah, I don't care." This is nice and topical.

   9. JCJason Calacanis3:42

      We call him an idiot anyway. Sure, we all do.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg3:43

       Let me, let me, let me hit this real quick because I know we're never gonna get to it because you guys just bullshit around, talking about politics for an hour.

   11. JCJason Calacanis3:48

       This is important science talk, Schulty.

   12. ASAndrew Schulz3:50

       Yeah, yeah, hit us, hit us.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg3:52

       You know how you can use Yamanaka factors. We talked about these, to basically turn a cell into a stem cell, right?

   14. ASAndrew Schulz3:58

       Of course, absolutely.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg3:58

       And that's what goes on in the lab. Andrew, you're familiar with the Yamanaka Factor research.

   16. ASAndrew Schulz4:01

       Everybody knows about the Yamanaka factors.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg4:04

       You've been all over it for a while.

   18. JCJason Calacanis4:05

       Absolutely.

   19. ASAndrew Schulz4:05

       Dude-

   20. DFDavid Friedberg4:06

       So now-

   21. ASAndrew Schulz4:06

       ... I've seen Squid Game.

   22. JCJason Calacanis4:08

       Yeah, absolutely.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg4:09

       (laughs) Now there's a, now-

   24. ASAndrew Schulz4:10

       You think I don't know about the Yamanaka factor? Come on.

   25. DFDavid Friedberg4:13

       We're not gonna get, I, I can tell you we're not gonna do this.

   26. ASAndrew Schulz4:14

       The Yamanaka factor. Everybody knows about it.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg4:17

       (laughs)

   28. JCJason Calacanis4:17

       So you, you didn't visit the Yamanaka factory when you were in Kyoto?

   29. DFDavid Friedberg4:20

       Listen, I went to the Yamanaka factory and I swear to God, a guy showed up 15 minutes late and he stabbed himself in the stomach right there.

   30. JCJason Calacanis4:27

       Right there.
3. 9:35 – 19:36

   Reacting to Gavin Newsom's new podcast: genius or pandering?

   1. DSDavid Sacks9:35

      (laughs) Gavin Newsom's got a podcast.

   2. ASAndrew Schulz9:37

      This is, uh ... So I think that this is, like-

   3. JCJason Calacanis9:40

      Hmm.

   4. ASAndrew Schulz9:40

      This is a great idea. Despite what you think about his politics, is he a plastic bag in the wind? Yes.

   5. DSDavid Sacks9:47

      Hmm.

   6. ASAndrew Schulz9:47

      But it is a great demonstration of, like, how Americans, uh, admire a bravery or courage.

   7. DSDavid Sacks9:55

      Hmm.

   8. ASAndrew Schulz9:55

      And we don't like (censored) , and I think that's what the Democrats kinda displayed in the last election. I don't wanna get too political about this, like-

   9. DSDavid Sacks10:01

      No, it's all right.

   10. ASAndrew Schulz10:01

       But like-

   11. DSDavid Sacks10:02

       It's your, your opinion. One man's opinion.

   12. ASAndrew Schulz10:03

       Yeah, it's more just, like, I, I respond to (censored) culturally. I don't give a (censored) about the tribalism in politics, but I'll just be honest with you. So having him have, like, Charlie Kirk right there, who's like a professional arguer.

   13. DSDavid Sacks10:14

       Yeah.

   14. ASAndrew Schulz10:14

       That he is whatever-

   15. DSDavid Sacks10:15

       Yeah.

   16. ASAndrew Schulz10:15

       You know how, like, di- some people are, like, autistic for dinosaurs? He's that for arguing, right?

   17. DSDavid Sacks10:20

       Yes.

   18. ASAndrew Schulz10:20

       And to, like, sit across from him, to even a- address the French Laundry (censored) -

   19. DSDavid Sacks10:26

       Hmm.

   20. ASAndrew Schulz10:26

       ... I was like, "Okay, this is actually the right thing to do." So as, as, as easy as it is for us to sit here and go, "Okay, this guy want, just wants to be president. Like, this is a dumb thing. Like, blah, blah, blah."

   21. DSDavid Sacks10:37

       Hmm.

   22. ASAndrew Schulz10:37

       It's actually what the Democrats should be doing, so I think we need to reward... I think we need to reward this behavior. We want more conversation. We want conversation with people especially that, like, you may disagree with. And, like, the second podcast he put out I thought was the most impactful.

   23. DSDavid Sacks10:55

       Hmm.

   24. ASAndrew Schulz10:55

       There was one piece that was incredibly impactful. He's talking to some guy, I don't know who he was, some guy from, grew up in, like, San Francisco. He's like a fisherman or some shit-

   25. DSDavid Sacks11:01

       Yeah, Mike Savage. Michael Savage, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   26. ASAndrew Schulz11:03

       I'm not, you know. He was talking about the taxes and, like, he's paying all this money in taxes in California and what does he get from it? And then Newsom said that, like, yeah, rich people are gonna pay more, but your actual, like, functional tax rate if you're middle class would be more if you lived in Florida because of the other stuff you get taxed on.

   27. DSDavid Sacks11:22

       Hmm.

   28. ASAndrew Schulz11:23

       This is the type of information that, like, you guys might be privy to, but the average person doesn't. They hop on the internet trends-

   29. DSDavid Sacks11:28

       So are you saying he's, like, being human and addressing real issues instead of, like, culture war issues and just-

   30. ASAndrew Schulz11:35

       Well, I-
4. 19:36 – 30:44

   Tariff experiment so far: risks, communication issues, and more

   1. ASAndrew Schulz19:36

      yes, we gotta stay on track. Can I tell you guys something about, uh, tariffs from a layman?

   2. DFDavid Friedberg19:40

      Yeah, please.

   3. DSDavid Sacks19:41

      Yeah, tell us.

   4. ASAndrew Schulz19:41

      Like, you guys are acutely aware of maybe how these things affect markets and yada, yada, yada, and most people don't have any fucking clue. So the- the- the average person, right? I look at this and I'm like, "Man, it kind of sucks that you gotta, like, negotiate your, like, your bid for a car that you're gonna buy publicly," right? So this is my assumption, and maybe I'm, like, a little bit more optimistic than most about the administration. But if I go to buy a car and the car is listed at 100K and I go offer the guy 80, right? Uh, I don't want everybody around me yelling out like, "How can you insult him by offering 80? This is an insult." And then I- I can't go to them and I go, "I'm actually trying to settle at 90, but I'm just saying 80 so he comes down a little bit."

   5. DFDavid Friedberg20:26

      Yeah.

   6. ASAndrew Schulz20:26

      But the unfortunate thing when you litigate these things in front of the entire world is that they look at that first measure that's 200% tax and- and Trump can't balk at it. He can't go, "Yo, I'm just fucking... I'm- I'm just playing around with that number. I actually am just getting them to come down 20% or 10%" getting them to come down anything is a win. He can't say that because he loses all his leverage. So he's gotta sit here and then get criticized by, I don't know if it's half the country, I don't know even know who really ends up caring about what these tariffs do. Obviously, there are repercussions in the market. I got a buddy of mine building a hotel out in Joshua Tree, and he's like, "I don't even know if I can get shit brought into the country from Canada." So it does affect people in real time, but it's impossible to do these negotiations with any leverage if you have the people within your own country questioning your ability to negotiate in real time. That is what the layman would think.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg21:11

      Well, I do think you're right in the sense that, in the early days when Trump was talking about tariffs, initially everyone was like, "Oh my God, he's gonna use tariffs. He's unpredictable." And then the narrative became, "He's using it as a negotiating tactic." The problem is, just like in poker, once everyone knows that there is this kind of action, it's exploitable. And so this is now kind of an exploitable mode of negotiation where everyone now assumes he's just trying to negotiate so no one actually takes him seriously. The question now, is the response gonna be that he's gonna be serious about it, or is he actually exploitable? And you saw what China's response was. I kind of view China as like AI. Like, stuff goes into China, the AI processes it, and it comes back out. China is like, obviously the way they're kind of structured, you have very little psychosocial bias like you do with other democratic governments.

   8. ASAndrew Schulz22:00

      Mm.

   9. DFDavid Friedberg22:00

      It's very systematic. It's systematically processed. Every piece of data is systematically processed, every action is systematically processed. And so I think when you look at how the Chinese ambassador responded to Trump on Twitter a few weeks ago where they're like, "Do you want war? We'll give you war. This is a hot war or a cold war, whatever you want," we've never seen that from an ambassador to the United States president before done on Twitter like this, let alone the Chinese ambassador. So I think it says a lot about how the Chinese AI is processing the Trump negotiating tactic or the Trump positioning statements on tariffs, which indicates that there may be now... I mean, we can talk about what game theory optimal play might be in this kind of poker game, what's gonna come next, but there's a- a real assessment that they've made on how far he is willing to take it. They've got a conclusive statement and they believe that this is the fastest way to kind of win their negotiating position. But it says a lot about where this is all going. Everyone now understands or views this as an exploitable moment, which unfortunately means that tariffs may not work or they're actually gonna have to stick, which can be really ugly.

   10. ASAndrew Schulz22:59

       Yeah, it could be painful.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg23:00

       Could be painful for everyone. Chamath, your thoughts on, uh, the tariffs and Andrew's position?

   12. DSDavid Sacks23:05

       What is the... I think that it's- it's like 120 some odd years, Nick, maybe you can find this tweet that I had, but almost the majority of years as a nation, or close to a majority of the years as a nation, we had no income tax. And the way that we would fund the programs that we needed was not from insiders, but from outsiders. And that's where the tariff was born, right? It's people domestically in America don't pay any taxes on the things that they do and instead, if you'd like to sell into the United States, you pay a reasonable tax. So this is the, so how many years? So it's 126 years from 1776 to 1861, then we paused it for a few years because of the Civil War, we restarted it again in 1872 and you notice when it stopped. When it stopped was right around World War I where this entire war machine broke out, and we've never looked back. So I don't know, I think that one way to think about this is we're probably gonna go back and explore, isn't it better if we have this incredibly vibrant and rich country of 330 million people with a ton of purchasing power-What happens if we put the burden, not on them to fund th- the American infrastructure and social programs and safety net, but if we put the burden on all the companies in the other 7.7 billion people in the world in the 185 plus countries that want access to these folks? Should there be exceptions? Probably. Should there be waivers in very specific and narrow cases? Absolutely. But I think that that's where these guys are going, and I think that-

   13. ASAndrew Schulz24:46

       Hmm.

   14. DSDavid Sacks24:46

       ... you heard this by the way yesterday from Howard Lutnick. I don't know if you guys saw this, but he said the Trump tax plan is gonna cut federal income taxes to zero for anybody making 150K or less.

   15. ASAndrew Schulz24:57

       Saw that.

   16. DSDavid Sacks24:59

       It's crazy.

   17. ASAndrew Schulz24:59

       What- what would the vulnerability in that be? Like putting the burden on all of these expenses-

   18. DSDavid Sacks25:06

       There are two-

   19. ASAndrew Schulz25:06

       ... that we would incur on other countries? What would that vulnerability for us be?

   20. DSDavid Sacks25:11

       There are two. The first is that-

   21. JCJason Calacanis25:13

       If we keep the expenses.

   22. ASAndrew Schulz25:15

       That's-

   23. JCJason Calacanis25:16

       That's the key.

   24. ASAndrew Schulz25:16

       If we keep the tariffs, if we charge them to come into the market, we charge them an extra 25%.

   25. JCJason Calacanis25:20

       But we- No, no. We- It's, it's-

   26. ASAndrew Schulz25:21

       Yeah.

   27. JCJason Calacanis25:21

       We, we talked about this last week. If you cut the budget, then it's, it can be net neutral. That's part of what they said.

   28. ASAndrew Schulz25:26

       Got it. Got it. Got it.

   29. DSDavid Sacks25:26

       But he's saying what is the strategic vulnerability? I think the strategic vulnerability is two. The, the thing with tariffs is, and you're pointing out this, let's just say today you say there's a tariff and then tomorrow you say, "Oh, we've found an agreement, and we're gonna take it off the table." One piece of logic would say, "Well, that's great. We're able to change our mind on a dime." The problem for countries and companies is that they can't think in 24-hour blocks of time.

   30. ASAndrew Schulz25:52

       Hmm.
5. 30:44 – 55:45

   Why the American Dream is broken and how to fix it: cracking the housing market, social security reform

   1. ASAndrew Schulz30:44

      think- I think the majority of people are thinking about the next week.

   2. DSDavid Sacks30:46

      Yeah.

   3. ASAndrew Schulz30:46

      So if you say that I don't have to pay taxes, like, and I think this is what Republicans are doing way better than Democrats right now, is like, Democrats don't have, "Build the wall." They don't have slogans, they don't have things that immediately tap into, like, core emotional feeling, regardless-

   4. DSDavid Sacks31:00

      Yeah.

   5. ASAndrew Schulz31:00

      ... if you're gonna do it or not. "We want Greenland." Okay, that's cool. Democrats need eggs are a dollar.

   6. DSDavid Sacks31:06

      Yeah.

   7. ASAndrew Schulz31:06

      Democrats need things that, like, echo their sentiments and how they want to, like, take care of people and provide for the disenfranchised, but it has to be done in a way where it's digestible, you can chew on it. If you want to make housing more affordable, then you say, "Yay, we're seizing public ca- land, we're building 10,000 units." Like, you have to tap into what Americans need, which is a feeling of not just comfort. Every American thinks they're gonna be a millionaire, that's what this country derives off of, right? It's every poor American-

   8. DSDavid Sacks31:34

      That hope, that hope, yeah.

   9. JCJason Calacanis31:35

      Yeah.

   10. ASAndrew Schulz31:35

       ... they, and the second they stop thinking they will be, they stop-

   11. DSDavid Sacks31:38

       Or they can be, yeah.

   12. ASAndrew Schulz31:39

       ... or they can be-

   13. DSDavid Sacks31:41

       Yeah.

   14. JCJason Calacanis31:41

       Yep.

   15. ASAndrew Schulz31:41

       ... it falls apart.

   16. DSDavid Sacks31:42

       Yeah.

   17. ASAndrew Schulz31:42

       And then some-

   18. JCJason Calacanis31:43

       Yeah.

   19. ASAndrew Schulz31:43

       ... healthcare CEO gets shot, and people celebrate. They're s- they're celebrating because they no longer feel the hope that they could be in that position.

   20. DSDavid Sacks31:50

       Yeah.

   21. JCJason Calacanis31:51

       That's well-said, yeah.

   22. ASAndrew Schulz31:51

       They feel so disenfranchised, they, they, uh, and this is what, like, I'm telling you, like, the you guys of the world need to pay close attention to because there's going to be no empathy if anything bad happens. "Oh, the stock market is down." No Americans are invested in the stock market, like- (laughs)

   23. JCJason Calacanis32:06

       No, I've been saying-

   24. ASAndrew Schulz32:06

       ... that's all you guys. (laughs)

   25. DSDavid Sacks32:07

       I've been saying it's... No, no, no, I've been saying this for months.

   26. JCJason Calacanis32:09

       Yeah, half the country is (overlapping)

   27. ASAndrew Schulz32:10

       ... I've been saying it for months, nobody cares about the stock market, nor should we. And the reason is because we, people who own these assets, have overly benefited, more than we deserved for the last 15 years. Ever since the great financial crisis in the United States, people who, as Jason said, could cozy up... And by the way, Jason, I think the, the, the claim that you made, which is, is, is severely true for how, from 2007 up until now, has played out. Because if you look under all the programs, if you could have lobbied Obama in those critical years of the GFC-

   28. JCJason Calacanis32:49

       Yup.

   29. DSDavid Sacks32:51

       Oh my god, the amount of money-

   30. JCJason Calacanis32:52

       Yum yum.
6. 55:45 – 1:11:23

   Aligning upside via increased stock market participation

   1. DFDavid Friedberg55:45

      You know?

   2. ASAndrew Schulz55:45

      When did you guys first started- start your education in- in the markets? Like, at what age did you feel like you sought out a...

   3. JCJason Calacanis55:55

      I bought my first stock in the company I was working for, or the parent company of the company I was working for in 1989 when I was 18 years old.

   4. ASAndrew Schulz56:02

      So 18. What about you, David?

   5. JCJason Calacanis56:04

      I bought $300 in stock.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg56:06

      Um, I signed up for an E-Trade account in college, uh, because I saw that TV show called Bull. Do you remember that TV show? It was about-

   7. JCJason Calacanis56:13

      No.

   8. DFDavid Friedberg56:13

      ... investment banking during the dot-com bubble. It was such a- no one knows that show. And I was-

   9. JCJason Calacanis56:17

      Yeah.

   10. DFDavid Friedberg56:17

       ... like, "Man, Wall Street is so cool. I wanna learn about stocks," 'cause I was an astrophysics major." I didn't, like- I didn't know what I was gonna do after I was gonna go to graduate school or whatever, and then I got caught up in the dot-com bubble and I started reading the Wall Street Journal every day. I would take it down to the friggin' plaza and I would read the Journal at school during lunch, and I tried to learn about tech and business and markets, 'cause I'd always been a tech guy and I'm like, "Man, there's all these startups and this is how the markets work." So I set up an E-Trade account. I put some money in it and I started- and I bought some stocks, and I read The Investor Business- Business Daily on what stocks to buy. They had a rating. And I bought those stocks and they went up, and I'm like, "Man, this is awesome." Like, "I love owning stocks." And that kinda kicked me off, and then I got an investment banking job after college and it totally changed my career trajectory. I was like, "I wanna go work in the tech industry and work in business."

   11. JCJason Calacanis57:02

       What about you, Chamath?

   12. DFDavid Friedberg57:03

       And it shifted it up for me.

   13. JCJason Calacanis57:04

       When did you buy your first equity?

   14. DFDavid Friedberg57:05

       But by the way, that- I- sorry, let me just say one thing. What you asked is a really important question. I just realized this, Andrew, 'cause my, um, my interest in that stock market thing at that time actually changed my career trajectory, and it really reset what I was gonna do with my life-

   15. JCJason Calacanis57:19

       Hm.

   16. DFDavid Friedberg57:19

       ... to get involved in business and go work in the tech industry as opposed to work in science as a researcher, and that was a really big shift for me. So it- it gave me that kind of a feeling of like, "Oh, I got to learn more," and then that- that kinda changed my career. Sorry, go ahead, Chamath.

   17. DSDavid Sacks57:32

       I was 14 or 15 years old and there was a ... this is when Rodney King had the (censored) kicked out of him and almost died.

   18. DFDavid Friedberg57:40

       Hm.

   19. DSDavid Sacks57:41

       There were all these race riots in LA, and nothing had changed actually in America, but where I was growing up in Canada, the provincial government created a program that said, "If you're a minority and you're on welfare, we'll pay for you to get a job." I- I was a minority on welfare, so I got a job and it was at a startup that was just going parabolic and their stock was going nuclear, and I lived in this shitty part of town and I would see the controller of that company drive past me every day while I was waiting for the bus. And one day he stopped and I went with this guy, Sam Legg. He drove me that whole summer and he taught me: what does the company do, why is the founder a billionaire? What the hell does this even mean?

   20. JCJason Calacanis58:31

       He unpacked it.

   21. DSDavid Sacks58:32

       And so I saw firsthand what it meant to work not for a salary, but to get a stake in the thing that you're working for.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg58:40

       Hm.

   23. DSDavid Sacks58:40

       I bought a couple shares. It went up and it was great, but then I really fell in love with this idea that I could understand something and own a piece of it, and then it really accelerated when I graduated from college because I was, like Friedberg, I was in debt and I was like, "How the fuck do I get out of debt?"

   24. DFDavid Friedberg58:57

       Hm.

   25. DSDavid Sacks58:57

       And I traded stocks on behalf of my boss, this guy Mike Fisher, who I thank to this day, and I made so much money right before the dot-com crash, he gave me the money to pay off my student loans.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg59:10

       Wow.

   27. JCJason Calacanis59:11

       Wow.

   28. DSDavid Sacks59:12

       And then ever since then, I was hooked. I was like, "Okay, I can learn this and I can deal with the vicissitudes of this." Look, the markets are brutal.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg59:19

       Hm.

   30. DSDavid Sacks59:19

       There are moments where you just wake up and it looks like everything's working, and then there are moments, and this is what everybody needs to understand though if some of these programs work, where it literally looks like the bottom is falling out.

Episode duration: 1:39:11