E85: SBF's crypto bailout, Zendesk sells for ~$10B, buyout targets, US diplomacy, AlphaFold & more
Chamath Palihapitiya (host), Jason Calacanis (host), David Sacks (host), David Friedberg (host), Narrator, David Sacks (host), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of All-In Podcast, featuring Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis, E85: SBF's crypto bailout, Zendesk sells for ~$10B, buyout targets, US diplomacy, AlphaFold & more explores crypto Meltdown, Zendesk Buyout, War Fears, and AlphaFold Breakthroughs The hosts dissect the ongoing crypto collapse, highlighting opaque off-chain leverage, custodial risk, and systemic fragility exposed by failures like Three Arrows Capital and bailouts led by Sam Bankman-Fried.
Crypto Meltdown, Zendesk Buyout, War Fears, and AlphaFold Breakthroughs
The hosts dissect the ongoing crypto collapse, highlighting opaque off-chain leverage, custodial risk, and systemic fragility exposed by failures like Three Arrows Capital and bailouts led by Sam Bankman-Fried.
They pivot to public markets, using Zendesk’s ~$10B private equity buyout to illustrate a regime shift from “growth at all costs” to cash flow, discipline, and cost-cutting, including scrutiny of stock-based compensation.
Macroeconomic concerns dominate the latter half: persistent inflation, likely recession, and the Ukraine war’s drag on energy, food, and market sentiment, with debate over whether the conflict was avoidable via diplomacy.
The episode closes on a hopeful note, showcasing a major AlphaFold-enabled scientific advance in mapping the nuclear pore complex, opening new avenues for understanding and treating disease.
Key Takeaways
Crypto’s collapse exposed massive off-chain leverage and custodial risk that bypassed promised transparency.
Much trading and lending occurred off-chain on centralized exchanges and shadow lenders, so users who thought they ‘owned’ Bitcoin often just had IOUs that disappeared when schemes like Terra/Luna imploded.
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Most non-Bitcoin tokens functioned as unregulated securities, enabling a global “casino without rules.”
Hosts argue that tokens were overwhelmingly purchased for speculative appreciation, not utility, making them de facto securities but without the clearinghouses, margin rules, or disclosure that protect investors in traditional markets.
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The public market regime has shifted from hyper-growth at any cost to disciplined growth with real cash flow.
Zendesk’s buyout and activist pressure show investors now prioritize margins and free cash flow; many SaaS companies will be forced to slow growth, cut burn, and possibly sell to private equity rather than chase endless top-line expansion.
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Stock-based compensation and evergreen equity plans are diluting shareholders and drawing new scrutiny.
Some tech companies issue 2–4% new shares annually to pay employees, effectively funding operations via dilution; this is prompting pushback from institutional investors and could drive higher cash salaries and more performance-linked equity.
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Private equity buyers aim to turn mature SaaS into cash cows by slashing costs and R&D.
PE firms can earn strong returns by cutting headcount, shrinking stock comp, reducing growth from ~30% to the mid-teens, and converting recurring revenue into hundreds of millions in free cash flow, even if innovation stalls.
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Markets are unlikely to find a durable bottom until inflation, recession risk, and the Ukraine war stabilize.
The hosts see three intertwined overhangs—persistent high inflation driving rate hikes, a looming or ongoing recession, and a ‘forever war’ in Ukraine fueling energy/food shocks—that must be resolved or clearly path-dependent before sentiment fully recovers.
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AlphaFold is rapidly becoming a foundational tool in biology, enabling new disease research paths.
By combining AlphaFold’s protein-structure predictions with cryo-EM, researchers built the most detailed model yet of the nuclear pore complex, potentially unlocking better understanding of cancers, infections, and gene regulation.
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Notable Quotes
“We've torched $2 trillion and it's not institutional capital; this is overwhelmingly retail capital.”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“What did we think would happen if you created a global casino with no rules?”
— Chamath Palihapitiya
“The whole thing [crypto] kind of moved up in sync, and the price action got decoupled from the level of progress in the space.”
— David Sacks
“If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it? And if real and recurring expenses don’t belong in the calculation of earnings, where in the world do they belong?”
— Warren Buffett (quoted by Chamath and Friedberg)
“This was a war that was easily preventable through the use of diplomacy.”
— David Sacks
Questions Answered in This Episode
Given the scale of retail losses and systemic opacity exposed in this crypto cycle, what specific regulatory frameworks or market structures would actually reduce risk without killing innovation?
The hosts dissect the ongoing crypto collapse, highlighting opaque off-chain leverage, custodial risk, and systemic fragility exposed by failures like Three Arrows Capital and bailouts led by Sam Bankman-Fried.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How should public tech companies balance growth, profitability, and employee equity now that perpetual high-burn strategies are being punished by investors?
They pivot to public markets, using Zendesk’s ~$10B private equity buyout to illustrate a regime shift from “growth at all costs” to cash flow, discipline, and cost-cutting, including scrutiny of stock-based compensation.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
At what point does stock-based compensation become so dilutive that it undermines the very alignment between employees and shareholders it was meant to create?
Macroeconomic concerns dominate the latter half: persistent inflation, likely recession, and the Ukraine war’s drag on energy, food, and market sentiment, with debate over whether the conflict was avoidable via diplomacy.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If the Ukraine war could be ended by negotiating neutrality and territorial compromises, what trade-offs—economic, moral, and geopolitical—should Western leaders be willing to accept?
The episode closes on a hopeful note, showcasing a major AlphaFold-enabled scientific advance in mapping the nuclear pore complex, opening new avenues for understanding and treating disease.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What are the most promising near-term medical or therapeutic breakthroughs that AlphaFold-enabled structural biology might realistically unlock over the next decade?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
Let's go, Jason start. Let's go. Do you have any intros? Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
All right, if you want intros.
(laughs)
We're not willing to pay for them, so don't even go there.
(laughs) Sax is awake.
All right, well then (laughs) we'll start with you Sax.
If you wanna do your job, you'll do the intros-
(laughs)
Here.
... but if you wanna, if you wanna slow roll your effort because you think you're negotiating with us-
(laughs)
... don't. We don't give a shit.
Listen, I'm doing all the projects outside of here.
You think we care about your intros?
(laughs)
Do a bad job, we don't care.
(laughs)
(laughs)
It's so true. (beep) waiting in the wings. All we need is-
All right, then I'll just do three Sax intros in a row.
... three of four. (laughs) Oh my God, it's so true. Do, could you do a couple of bad jobs so that we can boot you off the show. Oh, that would be so cool.
(laughs)
All right. Here we go.
Don't let your winner slide. Rain Man David Sax. And I said. We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you Betsy. Queen of Kinwa. I'm going all in.
All In Summit, I packed the joint. But Sax won't give me an extra point. His crypto holdings, they can't find a floor. Going to have him flying commercial for the first time since 2004. Welcome David Sax back to the program, the Rain Man.
Good to be here.
Ah, now Friedberg, I never wanted to see him go. But you gotta show up for work, you can't do every other show. The Sultan of Science, he's certainly not a fad. Then again, did you see those ratings with Brad? Welcome back the Sultan of Science.
(laughs)
(laughs)
By the way, our show beat Brad's ratings. So thank you very much, J-Cal.
Oh, okay. Well, a little, a little drama always builds a little audience. Okay here we go. Chamath-
A little healthy competition.
Well, Chamath, he's in Italy living a life so grand. His next SPAC, a luxury wine and sweater brand. This market is leaving him in a daze, so he's been tipsy in the Mediterranean for the past 10 days. Welcome back, The Dictator.
Thank you. Thank you.
Way to go. I just, I put them on stun. I didn't want to do any kill shots there.
(laughs)
Just, you know, since everybody's a little on edge including the audience. The audience had a lot to say about whether we cover a lot of the controversial topics, um, Roe v. Wade, January 6th, and Ukraine, all... I did a bunch of surveys. 50% of people want us to talk about it, 50% don't. So, uh, we'll see which ones we get today.
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