Episodes
E146: Did the Fed break the VC model? Plus IPOs, M&A, revaluing unicorns & more
All-In Podcast
9/22/2023
In this episode, the hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg start by discussing the 2024 political landscape, analyzing how Vivek Ramaswamy and Donald Trump are positioning themselves to challenge Joe Biden. There is also a brief mention of Jeff Bezos maintaining his physical fitness. The hosts then reflect on the massive success of the All-In Summit. Highlights included an opening talk by Ray Dalio, who passionately addressed the looming national debt crisis and stressed the need for Bipartisanship. They also praised standing-ovation presentations from Bill Gurley, economic analysis by Larry Summers, deep historical insights from Graham Allison, and the entrepreneurial genius of Toby Lütke. As the CEO of Shopify, Lütke has smartly expanded his platform's ecosystem by taking strategic equity stakes in partners like Klaviyo and Flexport. Turning to the markets, the panel analyzes the re-opening of the IPO Market with the recent public debuts of Instacart, Klaviyo, and Arm. The latter's IPO was heavily driven by SoftBank seeking liquidity. Chamath Palihapitiya criticizes traditional IPO mechanics, arguing that the Direct Listing framework—pioneered by companies like Spotify, Slack, and Coinbase—might be superior. In M&A news, Jason Calacanis mentions that Cisco recently acquired Splunk for $20 billion. On the macroeconomic front, Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve have indicated that Interest Rates}
In conversation with Chris Christie
All-In Podcast
9/8/2023
In this extensive episode of the All-In Podcast, the hosts David Friedberg, David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, and Chamath Palihapitiya conduct an in-depth, two-hour interview with former New Jersey governor Chris Christie regarding his run in the 2024 US Presidential Election. A prominent focus for entrepreneurs and business leaders tuning in is the macroeconomic environment, particularly the unsustainable national debt. David Friedberg presses hard on the fiscal cliff facing Social Security and Medicare, prompting Chris Christie to bravely advocate for unpopular but mathematically necessary cuts, means testing, and the federal implementation of Zero-based budgeting—a rigorous corporate allocation strategy he previously brought to state government to eliminate waste. The conversation heavily scrutinizes the Department of Defense and the broader Military-Industrial Complex. David Sacks condemns the inefficiencies and revolving door policies benefiting massive defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, questioning how an $877 billion budget results in critical ammunition shortages. On the foreign policy front, they aggressively debate the Ukraine War and the respective roles of NATO, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Zalinsky). Chris Christie argues for stronger, uncompromising support against the growing authoritarian bloc of Russia and China, while David Sacks expresses severe concern over escalation and the lack of a clear exit strategy. Do
E144: Biden targets Elon, BRICS challenges the West, Tiger hit piece & more
All-In Podcast
9/1/2023
In Episode 144 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg analyze a broad range of geopolitical, technological, and economic developments. The conversation kicks off with a critique of the Biden Administration and the DOJ (Department of Justice) for allegedly targeting Elon Musk. They discuss ongoing federal investigations into Tesla regarding a glass house project and a lawsuit against SpaceX over its hiring practices, which conflict with Export controls. The hosts argue this is part of a broader political attack, noting how the administration previously elevated General Motors while ignoring Musk's contributions, and touching upon controversies involving Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's emails. The hosts also mention Chamath's viral 'man in the arena' tweet on Twitter (X), and touch on political and cultural developments like the rising poll numbers of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as singer Oliver Anthony clarifying his song's message. A major portion of the episode focuses on the recent expansion of BRICS to include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Iran, joining founding members Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Sacks presents data showing that BRICS now surpasses the G7 in terms of Purchasing Power Parity and controls a massive share of global energy resources, drawing comparisons to an OPEC+ integration. This geopolitical shift is largely driven by a desir
E143: Nvidia smashes earnings, Arm walks the plank, M&A market, Vivek dominates GOP debate & more
All-In Podcast
8/25/2023
The podcast opens with an interview featuring a NASA astronaut aboard a SpaceX mission. The conversation shifts to product quality, highlighting the success of 21 Seeds, a tequila brand acquired by Diageo in the M&A Market. The core tech discussion focuses on the massive AI Infrastructure Buildout, where Nvidia is dominating by supplying H100 GPUs, epitomizing the Picks and Shovels (Investing Strategy). Other tech giants are developing proprietary silicon: Tesla is building Dojo, Apple is utilizing Apple Silicon, and Google has long used its TPU. In the cloud and compute space, Microsoft and Amazon are rapidly expanding, while specialized providers like CoreWeave emerge. On the chip architecture front, SoftBank is pushing Arm into the IPO Market to alleviate debt. Arm faces increasing competition from open-source alternatives like RISC-V. Open-source hardware principles are also gaining traction, championed by Meta through the Open Compute Project. In software, open-source models like Llama 2, hosted on platforms like Hugging Face, are challenging proprietary models. However, OpenAI continues to advance ChatGPT with enterprise fine-tuning, relying heavily on data from Common Crawl. This index was funded by Gil Elbaz, who previously founded Applied Semantics, the company that became the backbone of Google's AdSense, which greatly benefited early publishers like Weblogs Inc. As the M&A Market stalls—evidenced by regulators scrutinizing Adob
E142: "Rich Men North of Richmond" hits #1, upward mobility, real estate capital crunch, Trump RICO
All-In Podcast
8/18/2023
In this episode of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg engage in a wide-ranging discussion spanning from pop culture to macroeconomic and political insights affecting the United States. The conversation kicks off with Jason Calacanis sharing a story about partying near music star Drake, before moving to critiques of modern corporate decisions, citing Disney and its recent cinematic revisions. The hosts then analyze the viral success of the song Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony. They agree the track taps into a rising wave of Populism fueled by deep-seated frustrations regarding Income Inequality and the fading accessibility of the American Dream. David Friedberg cites Charles Koch on the detriments of occupational licensing, while Chamath Palihapitiya points to historical policies like Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty as a root cause of systemic issues. David Sacks adds that institutional failures during the COVID-19 pandemic heavily accelerated this populist sentiment. In the financial segment, the group dissects recent 13F filings revealing that Michael Burry is utilizing Short Selling strategies via put options against the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Shifting to the broader economy, they evaluate how Inflation and high Interest Rates, governed by the Federal Reserve, are wreaking havoc on the Commercial Real Estate sector. Large institutional players like Blackstone are reportedly re
E141: State of Series A's, VC dry powder, IPO window opens + more with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner
All-In Podcast
8/11/2023
In episode 141 of the podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg are joined by guests Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner, while Chamath Palihapitiya is absent. The group exchanges career advice, discussing how reading biographies of influential figures like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Akira Kurosawa, Danny Meyer, and Stephen King can help founders optimize their Software Business Models. The conversation heavily focuses on the current state of Venture Capital. Data from Carta shows a significant slowdown in Series A funding, reflecting what Sacks calls a SaaS Recession, even as AI (Artificial Intelligence) continues to see a specialized valuation mania. The panel unpacks the myth of Dry Powder, explaining that Limited Partners (LPs) are putting intense pressure on General Partners (GPs) because of the Denominator Effect, which has left LPs overweight in Private Markets. With the M&A Market chilled by regulators, companies in the Unicorn Economy must look to the reopening IPO Market. Morgan Stanley is preparing potential listings for companies like Instacart, Arm, Klaviyo, and Reddit. However, because of bloated valuations and complex Liquidation preference stacks, many of these listings will be Down rounds. Gerstner, a Crossover investor inspired by Warren Buffett, notes that private portfolios are increasingly benchmarked against liquid public indices like the S&P 500 and the QQQ. Gurley highlights that the power law