SPEAKER_03: point of privilege. Saxe wore this hat last week. What's this brand? Is this a Moncler hat?
SPEAKER_04: And actually, did you see that that tweet people it's trending, it started trending after I wore it. So it's sold out, dude, you sold out the Moncler hat. So we have
SPEAKER_03: no advertising. We feel like if we're not going to do any
SPEAKER_00: advertising on the show, we should at least get free clothes, we get to pick through them, where would we like?
SPEAKER_04: I know where's my cut? Where's my cut as an influencer? The tweet basically said that I name dropped Laura Piana and
SPEAKER_02: sent it through the roof and then Saxe they dropped Moncler. Both brands obviously are Italian, both entrepreneurs we know very well. And so I asked that I said, Nat, can you basically send this tweet over to them? So maybe they can give us free clothes. Let's get the grift going boys. Now we're talking. Now we got
SPEAKER_03: some bestie grifts. You're speaking my language. This is a cup of tea.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of grifts.
SPEAKER_04: I do like Moncler the way that Chamath likes Laura Piana. Just so you guys know at the birthday Jason that you missed.
SPEAKER_03: Are we allowed to talk about poker?
SPEAKER_02: We had a birthday we had a surprise birthday party for me. That through it. Saxe showed up. Freebrook showed up. Their wife showed up. It was incredible. J Cal basically stiff army. I'm very sorry. It was a bother that came together four days
SPEAKER_03: before your birthday. So just show you. Well, you know what Kevin Hart showed up.
SPEAKER_02: Give us the best one liner which one landed?
SPEAKER_03: Oh, no, Jake. You have no idea. These guys roasted me. It was
SPEAKER_02: fucking incredible. But the best of it was at the end. Okay, hard gets up with no preparation. And skewers everybody free bird. I mean, deep. What do you think of like Kevin's race?
SPEAKER_00: Carter. He was so funny. He's like, my wife walked in here and she looks at me and she's like, these, these guys. It was so funny. But it was so funny. He dropped line after. He's a ringer. He's a professional.
SPEAKER_02: Well, he's maybe the funniest person in the world. And then
SPEAKER_00: sax had to come after. Yeah, exactly. Xander. I don't know
SPEAKER_04: why Xander was the MC. But because I was safe Kevin Hart for last, but instead he calls up k hard in the middle. That's was so tilted.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so wait. So I couldn't make it because I had Burning Man. Xander does emceeing then Kevin Hart you were saying is just to fill in the audience here so they can understand it. Kevin Hart comes in. He gives this incredible ad lib roast. And then sax has to go after him. Yeah. First of all, it's Anders is funny. That's a great bag. What a sandbag. It's a root. Sanders is funny as a root canal. He
SPEAKER_04: should not have been the MC. So yes, we did miss you Jake. How you should have been the MC. Second k hard should have been left for last obviously worse. But Xander, Xander being a good liberal couldn't censor me outright. So he had me go after k art. That's like the next best thing.
SPEAKER_03: Did you steal his documents? Did you steal all his jokes and put them in your I just threw I had all these like jokes written. I just
SPEAKER_04: threw them out the window because I can't what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna deliver jokes after Kevin Hart. So I just told a story. You know, Kevin Hart like killed I mean, the room
SPEAKER_00: was that's like getting punched by Mike Tyson and being like, Oh my
SPEAKER_03: God, that hurt. It's like shits Mike Tyson.
SPEAKER_03: We were at the the code conference we had the poker game was the last one after 20. Shout out to Kara Swisher.
SPEAKER_02: Big shout out to Kara Swisher. I want to say to Walt Mossberg
SPEAKER_03: and Kara Swisher because they did the conference many years together. Congratulations on a 20 year run. They're not going to do it. Kara is not going to do it next year. But my friend Jim Bankoff, who runs Vox is going to run it next year. So congratulations to him and Kara for a great run and all things deep. They you know, they they had Steve Jobs at the first one first speaker and you can look it up. I got to ask him a question. Jake, I don't know if you remember this, but you and I
SPEAKER_02: were there when Gates and jobs did that speech together.
SPEAKER_03: Unbelievable. What what an incredible legacy that she documented. Code code is incredible. Like I mean, the number of the amount
SPEAKER_02: of memories I have from that place is incredible. That's great. And so we'll see where the poker game goes next
SPEAKER_03: year. Probably the all in summit. I think the all in summit could have been that
SPEAKER_00: it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. I'm not saying
SPEAKER_03: that I'll be hosting the code conference next year. But you know, they're looking for an impresario. This is the problem with this pot is we're drawing too many high profile people in now. But interestingly, freeberg and I, we now have the press wants the press are trying to do a profile of the pod. And so we had three or four different press outlets. Now I would say which ones but have all asked us to do like a sit for a profile. We've said no. But just because I said, Why don't we do a profile of them? Who's to make them the media,
SPEAKER_00: you know? Well, I mean, exactly. Our competitors want to do a piece on us. Why would we
SPEAKER_04: cooperate? You know, it's gonna be a hit the hit piece. It
SPEAKER_03: probably be a hit piece. Yeah, of course, because we're we're
SPEAKER_04: stealing influence and clicks and views away from them. It's done besides they're ideologically motivated anyway. So they're they're message police sex. You don't think
SPEAKER_00: you're ideologically motivated? Listen, if you contract the
SPEAKER_04: official narrative, then they write a hit piece about you. That's how they try to enforce discipline. It's true, actually. But not all outlets. I like the independent ones. I do have to
SPEAKER_03: say like, this whole, you know, sub stack movement in independent artists, or independent journalists becoming even more indie. In fact, Kara Swisher is more Indian now she left the New York Times, specifically because they were, you know, giving her a hard time about certain guests or certain conversations. And now she's, you know, doing her podcast independently with Vox publishing it for her. So you see more and more of the voices go independent New Republic is doing a hit piece on me right
SPEAKER_04: now. I have no idea why it's the same email me and I see them and I was like, here's my official comment. I can't wait
SPEAKER_03: to visit sacks when he's in the White House in 20 years. And the guy's like, so you're saying sacks is writing for a president. I'm saying, No, I'm saying that you don't understand a joke. That was a joke. Yeah. And then and then after you copied me,
SPEAKER_04: then they're like, Oh, yeah, we were reaching out to David to to get in. Yeah. And reached out to you yet. Right. I had it reached out anyway. So they were going a little sneaky sneak.
SPEAKER_03: They were trying to get me to talk about it. I don't have
SPEAKER_04: time to talk to them. No, that looks a nice. That would be a
SPEAKER_03: nice profile. I think nobody reads. If it were if it were Michael Kinsley running the New
SPEAKER_04: Republic, I'd be happy to, you know, take the time but it's not that anymore. It's just another left wing rag that's into policing speech. You know, they asked, they sent us a bunch of questions. Like, you know, why? Well, I don't I don't have them in front of me. But they're like, they're basically like, why did you support the recall of Jason Boudin stuff like that? And my, you know, PR person got back to him and said, Have you seen the all in pod? Have you read David's like Twitter because he explained this like abundantly for the two years he was advocating every week we talked about this. There's about the guy was sitting there in the transcripts, right? He's like,
SPEAKER_03:
SPEAKER_04: Oh, he talked about in the pod. He the guy didn't listen to the pod. He's like he tweeted about this. No, he just thinks I'm like some right wing donor who was like trying to get chase it kicked out that kind of narrative, you know, so I'm like, this is a total waste of my time. Go read all my tweets, go watch the all in pod, and then come back with any questions I haven't been answered. It's this lazy reporting on the new republic's part. Why would
SPEAKER_03: you do a profile if you didn't actually
SPEAKER_02: are having a serious conversation while free bird is fucking around with his background? What is his background? What is that? It's a future city in Saudi Arabia.
SPEAKER_04: Who else is planning on doing a hit piece about us? Okay, so the
SPEAKER_03: information reached out. And we said no. Are you going to be saying this actually on the show right now? I guess if I think
SPEAKER_00: this way, we should deal with all inbound press inquiries is
SPEAKER_04: we'll tell them no. And then discuss it on the pod. Yeah, because they want to quote if they want to quote, listen to our pod and then transcribe what we say on this pod or reverse
SPEAKER_00: it. My quote for the new republic is that if Michael
SPEAKER_04: Kinsley were still the editor, I'd be happy to spend my valuable time talking to you. But he's not a fair profile. Of
SPEAKER_04: course, it's not gonna be fair. There are the speech police now. And the fact that he didn't even know the fact he didn't even know that I wasn't just a donor on the chase of Boudin thing. I was the first person that I'm aware of, at least within Silicon Valley, who called out chase a Boudin for the horrible job he was. I mean, that was bipartisan. By the way. It's not
SPEAKER_03: like David Sachs is one of the 3% of San Franciscans who are Republican. Like he's not able to vote for the 69% of people who voted chess a Boudin out. So like, you can't spin that one. You're categorizing me as like, just a partisan. That's not
SPEAKER_04: really how I come at these issues.
SPEAKER_00: Can we go back to your quotes? So that was your comment for New Republic? J Cal, do you have a comment for New York Times? And then it started with Eric, I gotta be a fair Eric newcomer, who's
SPEAKER_03: awesome, who worked at the information started his own substack, which is really good, by the way. And he comes on my other pod. He's awesome. And so I'm going to be a guest on his pod, because I promised him and he does my pod, but I'm not going to be a guest. My philosophy is I told him I said you can have me as a guest, but it can't be more than 10% all in because I don't want it to become an all in profile. We agree it as a group. We're not doing an all in profile right now. So up to 10% can be about all in but the other 90% got to be my other projects. And he said totally fine. I understand but he asked first and actually I would be inclined to do with him because he's if we were going to do it, but then what do they need? I mean, like we create like hours and hours
SPEAKER_04: of content. And the dramas out here for everybody to like, I don't
SPEAKER_04: understand like what is what do you need our cooperation? I think
SPEAKER_03: you want to know you want to maybe frame and get a couple of sleep. No, you want you just want to get a couple of quotes that are unique. So that's worth reading. These two guys have
SPEAKER_02: shoved their heads up each other's asses. It's like a
SPEAKER_00: serpent. Why number engine serpent? You're clear up here.
SPEAKER_03: Clean bill of health sex. So anyway, Eric newcomer asked, and then the information and Kevin ruse know the New York Times
SPEAKER_04: disaster, right? Kevin ruse. Okay, what was a nice nice
SPEAKER_00: record your comment? My comment in the New York Times is Yeah,
SPEAKER_03: enjoy the pod while it lasts. We're trying to keep it together. I mean, I'll say the other big issue is I got approached by a couple of by two different people who want to who want to represent the pod. They say they're seven and a half million dollars in advertising we're leaving on the table by the 150 a week. Good.
SPEAKER_02: And that and literally, that was
SPEAKER_03: I want that number to grow to 10 million 20 million killing me.
SPEAKER_03: You realize I would have a plane if you guys just let me sell the fucking heads on this thing. I could get like a million and a half dollars in jets. You would have a plane if you just did one
SPEAKER_00: other thing. You're doing things just do one thing. I'll tell you
SPEAKER_04: what it is. You'd have a plane if you're smarter.
SPEAKER_03: That's not that's not nice. That's not nice. I would have a plane if I got luckier. I will say whoever said this is going to help our core businesses. And that's the reason I think it might have been you tomorrow. I am raising my fourth fund. I am doing it 506. See, which is public. I tweeted about it. I had 1200 people sign up for the webinar. And this means I might have to increase the size of my fourth venture fund because so many people listen to this pod and want to hang out. So thank you to everybody who listens to the pot. I think bro. I'm probably I mean, it's just nice. You know, I you know, I struggled to raise the first couple funds. You guys backed me but like I couldn't break through as a solo GP with the with the big LPS but I'm hoping to get one big LP this time and you know, it's I'm going to be oversubscribed with all the high net worth individuals and everything but I'd like to get like a memorial Sloan Kettering or somebody doing cancer research just to feel good about it. You know, I just want to say that I supported J Cal as a friend. In
SPEAKER_04: fact, I was the first LP check in your fund. But that does not mean that I in any way in any way that anybody else should come in. I mean, whatever you're like, I don't want to say the
SPEAKER_03: performance but you're doing okay. Let's leave it at that.
SPEAKER_02: And I would like to say that I was not the first but I was the biggest.
SPEAKER_03: You did. You did pretty big. Yeah, absolutely. And I will say that I'm still waiting for that moment to join
SPEAKER_00: you guys in J. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I'll just keep coming to your LP
SPEAKER_03: meetings and entertaining your thanks, pal. Entertaining.
SPEAKER_04: Wait, is Jake Allen investor in production board? No, we have done we've done a syndicate together.
SPEAKER_03: You're you're my smallest investor. You're
SPEAKER_00: about happened, but let's get to work. Queen the passing of the Queen real quick before we start or is that I would like to be born in Sri Lanka. I was raised in
SPEAKER_02: Canada. So and now I live in the United States. Obviously, I've been a citizen of all three countries. So two of the three countries. I've been a subject to the queen. I mean, I'm part of the Commonwealth. And I just want to say, it was really sad for me, like these last couple of days when I saw that she was sick, and then she had passed. I gotta be honest with you, like it really touched me she is an in, I can't describe to you guys, for someone who is part of that realm, how important she is as a person. And then, you know, if you've seen, you know, the the show on Netflix, it kind of romanticizes a little bit, but you know, she has seen 17 prime ministers. She's seen so many presidents, she has seen the history of the world, the modern world being made in front of her. So yeah, I'm a little sad. And I think she's an incredible person. And even if you don't agree necessarily with monarchies in general, I think you have to be super positive. History of imperialism, there's a lot of people that are kind of
SPEAKER_00: using this moment to be negative, right? In Jamaica wants to become a republic, Australia wants to
SPEAKER_02: become a republic. They'll prosecute that in due time. But for right now, I just think that we have to celebrate this incredible woman who lived to an incredible age, who saw incredible things, and who dedicated her entire life to the public service and lived it totally neutrally, which in today's world, nobody else does. Everybody else takes the point of view point everybody else, everybody else tries to basically like, you know, create a schism. She never did that. She never did that in 70 years as the Queen.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like very stoic, very stoic and a symbol of service, not a symbol of dictatorship, right? I mean, there seems to be a very different role that she's taken as a monarch than I think what has maybe historically been the role, which is incredible. Pretty profound, right? It's extraordinary that somebody
SPEAKER_03: would put 70 years of service and be that diligent. And I think stoic and in there for her people and to the people who are suffering and grieving, you know, that word you said really
SPEAKER_02: resonated with me like diligent is such a great word because it's like, you're disciplined, you put in hard work, you're focused on the long term goal, and then you're selfless. Yes, not many people, not many people, Jake, how do you know this exhibit that at all, but then definitely don't exhibit it over 70 years.
SPEAKER_03: It's, it's extraordinary. And yeah, it's I know a lot of people are grieving right now. So you have somebody as a
SPEAKER_02: person of the monarchy, I am of the Commonwealth rather I am pro Queen Elizabeth and deeply saddens me to see that she passed away. All right, listen, we got to talk about winter is coming. I'm
SPEAKER_03: not talking about Game of Thrones. Let's talk about something serious that's going on here. And we don't like to be too repetitive here. But I think we correctly predicted that, you know, this if this Ukraine, I think maybe Sax you pointed this out of this year. What do you mean we Kemosabe?
SPEAKER_03: All right, listen, I'm trying to give you fucking credit and interrupting the key just take the fucking win. You're such a miserable bastard. I try to give you one fucking finish finish
SPEAKER_04: what you're saying. And you cut me off. All right, listen, we've
SPEAKER_03: been talking about this Ukraine thing stacks correctly predicted if this goes to winter, this is going to get acute. And of course, right on cue here we have it Russia has essentially cut off gas to Europe right now by claiming that the Nord Stream one, the north pipeline that Russia built goes under the Baltic Sea. They basically say a turbines broken in it magically at this point in time right before winter, this turbine broke according to Putin, and he needs a turbine. And if they give him a turbine, he said he's gonna turn it back on this in the face of Europe saying they were going to cap the price of Russian gas. I don't know how that works exactly that you tell people what they can charge for gas. But Russian gas shipments, which Germany is particularly dependent on have fallen 89% since last year and the price of liquefied natural gas in Europe is four times level a year ago, and eight times the level of the US obviously we are have gotten incredibly lucky to find all this natural gas here and we are a huge exporter of natural gas and oil in the United States. So we're good. This is the highest power prices have been in three decades. And the perfect storm is not limited to oil and the Russia and the Ukraine war. France's 56 nuclear power plants are running at half strength because of shutdowns over corrosion problems. And as we talked about, maybe two episodes, droughts have undermined hydroelectric power because of these, that's not the main issue here. The main issue
SPEAKER_04: is the I'm just saying this is there is a perfect storm here.
SPEAKER_03: It's not just that 40% of Europe's energy consumption
SPEAKER_00: comes from Russian natural gas 40% and so you could see variants. There's a baseload requirement for lighting and electricity and then there's industrial production and then there's heating and cooling. Heating and cooling demand is linearly tied to the number of degrees above or below 65 Fahrenheit on average. And so as the temperature goes up, people turn air conditioners on as the temperature goes below 65 they turn their heaters on. So there's a linear demand for power consumption at those. So number one is you could kind of you you can either cut baseload, which is lighting and basic kind of operations. Number two is cut industrial production, which is already happening. A lot of fertilizer plants are shutting down in the country that are dependent on natural in the continent that are dependent on natural gas. And number three is the heating and cooling. And that really ends up being kind of a market driven function, which is how pricey is this stuff? Because there's limited supply. So you could normally in a normal year see fluctuations around five, 10, 15%, maybe with with good kind of action and behavior. 40% of energy being cut is a massive, massive problem. There will be significant price climbs for the kind of variable demand and heating and cooling and so on. But for the price to go up by 6x, 7x, 8x, 10x, 15x over normal prices for someone is unbearable by the average household unbearable by the average small business unbearable by the average small building. And so it's causing critical failure across the economy, across the currencies across debt markets. And there's real concern that ultimately be shutting off a 40% of the energy supply to the continent leading into winter winter is coming where energy demand spikes because of the need for heating is going to cause real kind of problems. So there's the cataclysmic problem of people actually being able to heat their homes. There's the industrial problem of parts of the economy shutting down. And then there's the currency problem of the government's needing to step in and bail out industry buy super expensive gas, give it to their citizens and their businesses at a discounted price, and seeing their national and sovereign debt skyrocket, which is now expected to happen. And as a result, the British pound is trading at its lowest level since 1985. And as a result, people are rushing to the street from Prague to Cologne, Germany, even in London, proclaiming that the government's aren't doing enough number one, to stall the rate of inflation to make energy prices cheaper through action by having the government subsidize. And number three, which I think was inevitable and is now becoming kind of the surprise factor to the Ukraine crisis. Citizens are saying end this war now, get to the table with Russia, come up with a settlement and get the heck out of Ukraine. By the way, that's not everyone saying it just to be clear. But there is this rising rioting protesting behavior happening across Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, as a result of the Ukraine war. And so we're seeing, you know, I think a big shift in attitude and a big shift in kind of the societal perception of this war, particularly in Europe, because they're so acutely feeling the effects and we are not in the US, they're acutely feeling the effects. And they're saying we need to stop this war. Now, we need to get out of the way we need to let Russia turn the gas pipeline back on. And we need to figure out a resolution stop supporting Ukraine. And that's a what is a voice that was that's a voice that did not exist very loudly at the beginning and it's and it's starting to swell,
SPEAKER_03: running out of food, or, you know, running out of heat to keep your kids warm. I mean, these are pretty acute situations. What's the vibe in the Middle East about this? Are they looking at it and seeing it as an opportunity? Are they looking at it and seeing it as you know, a manageable crises and what do they consider their participation in this to be
SPEAKER_02: there's a very structured framework for energy production, which is OPEC and OPEC plus. And, you know, they have done not just the Middle East, but frankly, the Middle East plus United States, the best job possible to basically get the maximum demand so that there's as much energy as possible. The reasons that Europe are in an energy crisis really should be discussed. Honestly, so number one, an entire continent essentially allowed a 16 year old girl to dictate their energy policy. And when Greta Thunberg was able to shame an entire continent into basically walking away from nuclear, and not really evaluating how you can actually have energy independence, what they did was they put Europe in an incredibly fragile position. And at the beginning of this war, it wasn't clear how much damage the lack of Russian energy would do to the European economy. But now it's absolutely clear. How did that see that? We said it on the we said it on the pot in
SPEAKER_03: February. I mean, Trump said it years ago. I mean, how is it not
SPEAKER_02: obvious? The problem is, you had these, look, to be honest, you had these two goofballs. You had a goofball on the left, which is a 16 year old girl who knew nothing. And you had a goofball on the right, which is a president whose language turned people off, even though the message that he was delivering was 100% right when when Trump went to the United Nations. He was clear. He was precise. And in hindsight, and I'm saying this as a Democrat, he was right. Oh, about right German reliance on Russian gas and the European reliance on gas. What
SPEAKER_03: did they think would happen? The important thing was was the
SPEAKER_04: reaction. Remember the German delegation snickering while he was laughing, they were laughing, but but we're missing
SPEAKER_02: the real lesson. The real lesson is that in all of our haste, to basically overtly judge Trump because of his delivery and his, you know, his personal style or whatever. We ran towards a 16 year old person who has no rooting in science or technology to dictate the energy policy of an entire continent. I mean, she was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Just to remind you guys, this is how insane all of these people were. So in an effort to virtue signal to the hilt and beyond, what we essentially did what the entire world did was turn a blind eye to science, and turn a blind eye to mathematics, and simple understanding of supply and demand. And so now you have the situation where the entire continent of Europe is probably on the precipice of the minimum of a recession. But frankly, there's a lot of scenarios where it could be meaningfully worse. And I think what it does is ultimately it is forced the Russian endgame. And that Russian endgame is essentially the following, which is that Germany will probably be the first to capitulate. But it'll be a combination of the United States and Europe who negotiate some kind of a settlement. They have to fold. And the reason, well, without calling it folding, I would just say there's a settlement. And the reason the settlement is necessary is you're going to start to impact tens of millions of people's lives in an incredibly arduous way. And those people are asking their leaders to tell them why it's worth it. That's why you're seeing protests all around Europe. People have decided that this war has gotten two or three steps beyond what they thought they were getting into. And that it was shining light on a whole set of decisions that never should have been made. Sax, what's I think what people most want to know, and I'll go to
SPEAKER_03: freeburg after sex freeburg, I think people are gonna want to know, how do they close this gap in terms of the 40% dependency? So you can start thinking about that. But Sax, how do we resolve this issue with Russia without enabling them because nobody wants to enable them and reward them for evading countries. But here we are, they didn't settle this thing in the whatever nine months we're in now. And they don't have any more cards to play. They need heat they need. People can't freeze to death in Germany. So they're gonna have to fold in some way. And it doesn't seem like there's any gap that can be closed here in terms of the firewood to go around. It's all these stories about stockpiling firewood. That doesn't seem practical. Sure, you could reduce consumption by 1020 maybe 25%. That does seem reasonable. But there's still a huge gap here. So what's the end game Sax? I mean, it Well, first, I'm just just to put some
SPEAKER_04: numbers on this. There's a good report by Goldman Sachs called Europe's energy crisis is at a tipping point. This came out on September 8. And it says here that the price of natural gas in Europe, it used to just be 20 euros per megawatt hour is now above 200 per megawatt hour. So we're at 10 times the 10 year average in the market and winner is even here. So, you know, Europe is the Titanic winner is the iceberg. The main difference between this and the Titanic story is that everyone can see the iceberg. And yet no one is really changing course. So Liz trust, the new Prime Minister of the UK, so that Ukraine can depend on UK for support in the long term. Olaf Schultz said that Germany will support Ukraine as long as it takes macron, you know, from France so that NATO will stand together and prevent Russia from winning the war. So you know, leader after leader is doing the opposite of what you and Chamath have just said, which is try to figure out a compromise. In fact, in the last week or so new information came out about actions Boris Johnson took back in March or April when there was no when there was discussion about a peace deal about a month into the war. It turns out that Boris Johnson went to Ukraine and said no deal do not take the deal we need to weaken Putin Putin and Russia not compromise with them. So the fact of the matter is that the European leaders are increasingly out of touch with their own people. The agenda they are serving is not the agenda of or the desire of their people to basically stay warm in the winter or pay reasonable energy bills. They are serving this larger foreign policy agenda. This is why you're seeing people in the streets in Czechoslovakia and these other countries and this is why the crisis will only grow in winter. I think you guys are just assuming there's going to be a compromise. I'm not sure that's true. These leaders are stubborn. So this is why, for example, we've already now seen in the UK Boris Johnson lost power, although Liz trust basically has the same policy. Mario Draghi has basically lost in Italy. Bulgaria replaced their PM. So the leaders, the dominoes are starting to fall in Europe and I think there's going to be a lot more of this and who knows what governments we're going to end up with in Europe. And what's the end game then? I mean, what do you what do you
SPEAKER_03: predict will happen? Do you think they're going to hold their ground and not have a compromise? So Jamath pointed out the mistakes that these leaders made
SPEAKER_04: following Greta Thunberg. I think there's another mistake they've made, which is I think all of these leaders have pulled a Tony Blair. Do you remember Tony Blair? Tony Blair was the Bill Clinton of the UK. After Margaret Thatcher, he was the first Labour PM to get elected. He was incredibly talented as a politician and he was very popular in the UK until he did one thing. You know what that one thing was? He went along with George W. Bush's Iraq war. The people of the UK did not want to get involved in that war and Blair acted as W's lap dog and went along with it and bought into all of the lies about that war. And today he has zero credibility in the UK. It's really actually a sad story. I think that these European leaders are making a similar kind of mistake with respect to Biden's proxy war against Russia. Now let's go back. I want to go back to a point you made Jason, just now let's turn to Freeburg, which is you talked about the fig leaf that the Russians are blaming this on our turbine. I don't think that's even really true anymore. I mean, the Russians have basically said... Well of course Putin's lying, of course. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I think the Russians have basically said that,
SPEAKER_04: that listen, this is about your sanctions. It's sanctions and a turbine. It's like pick one. Right. But the point I'm trying
SPEAKER_04: to make it, look, obviously this is retaliation by the Russians. The problem is the stupidity of Western leaders in not thinking there's going to be retaliation. I mean, all you're hearing right now from Western leaders is indignation that Russia would play the only card they have, the card that was obvious they were going to play. You know, meaning that they're going to play the game. You know, meanwhile, look at what we've done. So you've got administration officials talking about the fact that we have commandos on the ground in Ukraine. You've got administration officials bragging about the fact that we are helping to paint targets on the backs of Russian generals so they can be killed. You have administration officials boasting about providing the artillery spotting so we could sink the Moskva, the Russian soldiers, all these things. Okay. You've got Biden saying that Putin cannot remain in power. You've got Lindsey Graham saying he was going to say, let's go forward. How does it
SPEAKER_04: resolve? You've got Lindsey Graham saying these be assassinated like Caesar, you've got the US appropriate 40 billion to hold on a second in weapons to Ukraine. So my point is this, okay, the US and the Western Alliance, they are doing everything in Ukraine, except pulling the triggers. Okay, they are truly spotty. Okay, so the point is, we are in a proxy war with Russia. What did you expect was going to happen? These leaders are not even playing checkers. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Forget about playing chess. They're not even playing checkers, meaning they cannot even anticipate what the Russians are going to do next. It was imminently predictable, imminently predictable that the Russians were going to turn off European gas and create this crisis. So what should they have done? What they should have done was work out a peace deal. I
SPEAKER_03: know that but we're kind of repeating the same position you have every week here. I'm trying to get to going forward. So, uh, Freiburg, what should we do going forward here, both on an energy basis and a political basis? That's the thing. I get the sort of breakdown of what occurred here in your position, Sax, but what do you think Freiburg should happen going forward? How do we resolve this? There's an acute energy
SPEAKER_00: shortfall. You can't just make that up. You can't convert oil into natural gas to heat people's homes. It's impossible structurally right now in the time frame that it's needed. So what should the U.S. and what should the EU be doing now that
SPEAKER_03: they're not doing? Yeah, I think that there's going to be this
SPEAKER_00: inevitability that we're going to need to broker a deal with Russia. And there's and what I think you'll see over the next couple of months particularly, because winter is coming, is you need to, uh, there's going to be a lot of saving face. And so I think I've always said from the beginning, I think that Putin's calculus is to go as far and as deep as he can go so that he could eventually negotiate himself back out in a way that leaves him with what he originally wanted in the first place. And I think that there are certain strategic regions and certain strategic assets that it's pretty clear and evident he wanted. And if he's gotten enough in addition to that, he can give up the additional part and he can get sanctions lifted and he can turn gas back on and be left with what he actually wanted and ultimately get out of this thing. And then the face saving will be from the West will be, hey, we got him to give up this, we got him to give up this, we got him to agree to non-incursion. And there'll be some sort of, you know, hey, we got Putin knocked down a bit and, you know, we got him out of there. We did it. We won. High five. Meanwhile, Putin's smiling because he got exactly what he wanted. I think that's where this is all going to end up over the next several months. I think that's, if it doesn't, there's going to be significant writing and civil unrest in Europe. And there will be a significant economic effect because so much of Germany and so much of the broader continent is dependent on a stable, low cost energy or lower enough cost energy supply for the production of things that are produced in Europe. And if those things can't be produced profitably because the end market won't pay for it, the economy will be shattered. Economies will be shattered and people will be really unhappy. Food will climb and the currency will be destroyed. And you know what happens when currencies get destroyed? All imports become inflated in price. And then you have inflation. If there isn't a resolution in the next few weeks, there will be civil unrest. There will be a really cataclysmic concerning economic effect. And you think that forces the governments to just
SPEAKER_03: fold to Putin and give him some portion of the Ukraine? Yeah. And I think the thing that we don't know for sure is what are
SPEAKER_00: they going to do from a face-saving move perspective? What are they going to say they got from Putin? The Ukraine or the the West alliance? The West plus Ukraine. We are going to have to plow so much money into the Ukraine to make them feel okay about what we're going to ask them to do in order to remove or to end the crisis. And so there's going to be this huge check, this huge investment in Ukraine, the Western investment in Ukraine, the support mechanism for the country, for the people left behind in order to get this thing resolved. And so my guess is huge amount of money from the West and EU going into Ukraine. Ukraine agrees to let Putin keep some region, some assets. Putin agrees to remove himself from certain regions and give up certain assets. Sanctions are partially lifted, but they're partially lifted enough to get the flow of gas going and to get the economy turning again.
SPEAKER_03: Chamath, any final thoughts here as we turn around third base here on this of lessons learned and how to avoid this in the future? You may want to find the clip, Nick, from July where I
SPEAKER_02: said the tip of the spear in the fall was going to be the European energy crisis. Oil is at 105 bucks a barrel. Russia is
SPEAKER_01: basically trying to break the back of Europe by now messing with their Nat gas supplies. The German energy minister yesterday said that if that happens, it could be a contagion equivalent to Lehman Brothers with respect to energy. You're already starting to see food riots, food insecurity, energy insecurity, rampant inflation, sovereign defaults. And you have to ask yourself, like, how are we going to really turn a kit this whole thing and prevent a much bigger contagion like free birth just talked about? If Russia decides to play hardball against Europe or America, we better hope that it's a mild winter because very quickly you can go from plus 1 million barrels to minus two in a heartbeat.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my final thoughts are the following, which is that I think that the European system is going to be put under stress because there are really a bunch of different countries with very different incentives right now, where some countries are in desperate need of energy. Some countries can probably stave it off for a little bit longer. Other countries are so adamantly focused on their position on Russia over and above any source of energy that they may need or don't have. So I just think like this is a really good point to take a step back and realize that in all of these conflicts, sadly, whenever you have like all of these very complicated countries fighting very complicated wars, it's really important to understand what these trade offs are. Because ultimately, what we're learning in Europe is that irrespective of what you morally and ethically believe is right in the Ukraine, the minute that it affects you and Jason, you've said this, what is it like you're only one meal away from a revolution? So yeah, three meals away. Yeah. And I think it would be you're only like five days
SPEAKER_03: away from having no heat before people ride on the street is probably a bad but, but that but that's the lesson, which is that
SPEAKER_02: at the end of the day, it is when you're in a position of comfort, you can focus on forward and out looking moral attributes and ethical perspectives that matter. But the minute that you are affected at home, where you cannot take care of your children, or heat your house, all bets are off. And I think this just goes to show you that if you're going to sort of engage in proactive foreign policy, you need to make sure that domestically, you don't have any Achilles heels. And Europe had a massive Achilles heel, which is energy. And then you know, the minute that they were well, they've just tested it. They're gonna have to take this
SPEAKER_03: much more seriously going into next year, because they've enabled a madman.
SPEAKER_04: That is the dominant narrative. There is a simplistic binary that has been set up that this is a war between autocracy and democracy. And that's all there is to it. And my point is that this conflict has always been more complicated than that. Okay, and if you really want to understand this conflict, you have to go back and understand the history of it. And you know, the American media and the British media, they basically act as if this whole thing began on February 24. For a good example of this was an excellent piece by William Perry, who is Bill Clinton's defense secretary. Okay, he said how the US lost Russia and how we can restore relations. And he talks about how we can chart a way forward for peace, which I think is your question. What Perry points out, remember, again, he was Clinton's defense secretary in the 1990s. He almost resigned in protest over NATO expansion eastward. This was basically a contradiction of the verbal assurances that James Baker and President George Herbert Walker Bush had given Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO one inch eastward. In any event, that's when NATO expansion began was the late 90s. Perry was against it because like George Kennan, like former ambassador of the Soviet Union, James Matlock, he understood that it would be provocative, it would be seen as a provocative move by Russia. Okay, he was against that policy. The other thing he points out is that in the 1990s, the Russian economy collapsed because they moved off of Soviet system. And we did absolutely nothing to help them. As a result of that, we bred the conditions for a strong man to emerge, who basically prioritized the restoration of Russian pride, dignity, and strength. Okay, so he points out the ways that our policies helped create Putin. I think what he basically suggests in terms of the way forward is, look, we have to realize that the security architecture of Europe was crafted in the late 90s and early 2000s at a time when Russia was flat on its back. Okay, what are the Russians basically demanding? What were their demands prior to this war? There were two things they really didn't like. Okay. Number one was they didn't know after doorstep we've been on this. They didn't
SPEAKER_04: want Ukraine admitted to NATO. And then number two is they didn't want American missiles right on their border that could hit Moscow in five minutes. Okay. Those were their two demands. The fact of the matter is we never were willing to negotiate at all on those two demands at all. And instead, we basically disclaim if they were a pretext by the Russians for an invasion. Well, look, we never earned the right to call those a pretext. If you want to call them a pretext, you take those issues off the table. Then if the Russians invade, you know they're liars. The truth of the matter is we refused to negotiate in any way. We never played that move.
SPEAKER_03: And so we'll never know. I don't disagree with you about that point. Okay. The US the European Union needs to learn the lesson of spending more money. I want to keep going
SPEAKER_04: with this because I think this issue is so much deeper. Okay, listen, one of the problems we have in this country is that when a war doesn't work out, we just ghost it. We never talk about Afghanistan anymore. We never talk about Iraq anymore. We understand they were gigantic mistakes. But who is analyzing why they happened? Who's responsible for the failure? The fact of the matter is there's been no accountability. The same people who drove our disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East are the same people who have driven our Ukraine policy in Eastern Europe. There is no accountability. The military concept? Not just that, it's the
SPEAKER_04: foreign policy elite in this country. Okay. So my point is that there are blocks. Yeah. Okay. So my point is this. And you're a duck. It sounds to me like you're willing to now say what compromise can we find to get out of this war? Okay. My point is since I'm trying to avoid war from the beginning, I
SPEAKER_03: do think we did not play the piece of, hey, if NATO is not here, if we don't let them in NATO, and we take that off the table, will you move these troops back from the border? And we don't know if they ever offer that or not. But you know, we do now actually, there was there was new information that came
SPEAKER_04: out of the last couple of weeks. Okay, obviously, they should have offered that. I mean, the real issue here is
SPEAKER_03: dependency on dictators for energy, because if he if he did not have the ability to yank that gas chain, if he didn't have that Nord, he would be neutered right now. But we knew
SPEAKER_04: that we knew that. So if you're playing, you're not even saying
SPEAKER_02: it accurately. If he didn't have Nord, it's that doesn't exist without an entire other counterparty agreeing to I
SPEAKER_03: agree if Germany had kept their nukes going. And if they had made other plans, perhaps with the military, but be more oil, or the United States. I mean, we don't forget, Biden
SPEAKER_04: canceled our energy independence the first day he was in office. It doesn't matter that it's a dictator on the other side,
SPEAKER_00: there is a dependency on the other side. And that is an issue for energy independence since the beginning, I've been talking about nuclear since the beginning. For decades, I've
SPEAKER_00: been talking about JKL, one of the challenges is if everyone creates independency on all of their supply, then there is no export market for countries that benefit from exports because they have a surplus. And so we see this around the world with food with energy with manufacturing, with oil, that'd
SPEAKER_03: be a good thing with oil, wouldn't it? China, there was no market for it. If there was no market for oil, then a lot of
SPEAKER_00: a lot of countries that do not have energy stocks locally would not be able to acquire energy stocks. And so a more free, more doesn't make sense. If you if you're saying if we lowered our use of oil, that would make it cheaper, which means that
SPEAKER_03: developing countries would pay less. JKL, just just let me
SPEAKER_00: finish with my point for one second. In every country, you are either an importer or an exporter. You're an importer of manufactured goods, or an exporter of manufactured goods. You're an importer of energy, you're an exporter of energy, an importer of food and exporter of food. It doesn't matter. And we often use this as a way to characterize the leadership at these countries as being bad when we end up in conflict with them. It doesn't matter that this person is that there's an autocracy on the other side, or if there's a democracy on the other side. At the end of the day, if there's a global trade agreement, if there's a supply agreement, and that supply agreement gets broken, it's both parties fault for being dependent on the supply agreement, and then allowing conflict to think what you're saying is accurate, and I'll explain why.
SPEAKER_03: reasonable parties who are democracies, if they get into a trade dispute, generally do not invade each other's country. So that's where your argument breaks down. It would be absolutely fantastic if the lesson the European Union learned here was let's not be dependent on autocrats. Hold on, hold on. What did the United States do to Iraq? Did we
SPEAKER_00: not invade those countries? I'm not talking about that. I'm
SPEAKER_03: talking about the dependency. You said that democracies do
SPEAKER_00: not invade. And Libya. I said we did. Two democracies that are
SPEAKER_03: in a trade war are generally not going to invade each other. We invaded Afghanistan because of 9-11. Okay, and the first Iraq war, we invade we protected Kuwait, right. And so you know, I'm not here to justify every war the United States has been in. I'm just talking about in this situation, the EU lowering their dependency. And if you were going to lower your dependency on any country, you'd start with the autocratic ones, you'd start with the dictatorships. Is that not logical to you? fredberg? There's a there's a neoliberal view. Hold on a
SPEAKER_04: second. There was a neoliberal view, I'd say court of neoliberalism. It's called economic interdependence theory, which is that as nations become more interdependent with each other, they're less likely to go to war. China was the perfect example, right?
SPEAKER_03: That's right. It was a perfect example. There was also a belief
SPEAKER_04: that as China became richer, they become more democratic. That hasn't worked out so well. No, I'd say economic interdependence theory hasn't worked out so well, either. So this is a core failing. Now you're modifying the theory to say, well, only economic interdependence among democracy is fine. But that was not the view. That was not the view for the last 20 years. It was a core ten of neoliberalism. If we make ourselves dependent, if we make ourselves dependent, if we make ourselves dependent on these other countries, then somehow it's going to lead to peace. No, it actually is just led to dependency. It was a foolish policy. We should have been energy independent. Europe should have been energy independent. I do agree that it was foolish. We're in agreement. Yes, you're disagreeing with fiber. Got it. Okay. No, no, I'm
SPEAKER_04: not disagreeing with fiber. I think but but by the way, I'm
SPEAKER_00: not I'm not a proponent of people not being energy independent. The reason I think people can be energy independent today is because of technology like nuclear. And I think that everybody in the world should find a way to get energy independent. I'm also an advocate of global trade. I am an advocate because I think that global trade enables economic progress. It allows the consumer to get the cheapest product possible and for the producer to find a market for the products that they make and that there's an element of this which is energy. But energy doesn't need to be a traded market as much anymore because of technology manufactured goods food. We still haven't cracked the nut on how to build a market. We are then in agreement freeburg. Yeah. I
SPEAKER_03: don't know why this is this is sort of an ancillary point, but
SPEAKER_04: I just want to say that historically there's been no basis for believing in economic interdependence theory. If you go back to World War One, Germany and the UK were each other's largest trading partners before World War One didn't stop them from getting into war. World War Two, I think Russia's biggest trading partner was Germany up until the moment when Hitler invaded them. So listen, economic interdependence has never has never. It doesn't. Yeah. But the there's very little historical basis for believing that economic interdependence prevents wars, which by the way that really speaks to the foolishness of our China policy. But look, this is sort of a side issue. Can I ask you a question, Saxo, with the China policy? Because I think this is a very
SPEAKER_03: important discussion we've discovered, which is energy independence is one thing and then you have trade, which is another. And does this actually push off wars? Do we actually know that we might have actually pushed off a war with China? Because we make iPhones together? Could we have been in a conflict earlier if we weren't so independent? And have we actually pushed out a potential conflict with Taiwan, etc? With the benefit of hindsight, what we can see, yeah, with the
SPEAKER_04: benefit of hindsight, what we can see is that our Chinese policy of interdependency really was called constructive engagement was a complete and unmitigated disaster. Why? It was because we made China rich. You go back to the beginning of Deng Xiaoping beginning his economic reforms. The average Chinese made $2 a day. Now their economy is roughly the same size as ours. And how are they using their newfound economic wealth to build up their military, their Navy? They're basically militarizing the South China Sea. They're basically being aggressive towards their neighbors. We fed that Chinese tiger until it became a dragon that was capable of challenging us for global preeminence. That was a foolish foolish strategy. The fact of the matter is that and listen, this is a mistake that economists make is that they only look at whether trade creates surplus as opposed to the distribution of those benefits. And the fact of the matter is that China benefited disproportionately far more than we did from the China trade over the last time. Our argument we've made on this podcast is I think Freeburg
SPEAKER_03: made it is that we lifted 500 million people. I think I made it as well out of abject poverty in China. But as you point what Yeah, it's going to have created we have created a return of a we've created the return of great power rivalry.
SPEAKER_04: We have created a competitor to the US who has roughly almost our same size economy. And that is going to challenge us for privacy and we need diplomacy. We need very sophisticated
SPEAKER_03: diplomacy because this situation with China, it's not a clear path. Why is it that you think that we need diplomacy with
SPEAKER_04: China when we didn't need it with Russia? No, I do think we
SPEAKER_03: did. I fully conceded that we should have avoided we should have taken note of the table. I said that from day one. Listen,
SPEAKER_04: it's really important to not just say that, oh, we failed to play chess here that this policy isn't working. Like let's not forget how we got into this conflict. We got into this conflict because the administration said I think there are four main pillars to our current Ukraine strategy. Number one, that Ukraine could basically defeat Russia if we basically just gave them weapons. That has not happened yet. Number two, the administration said that sanctions would weaken Russia, maybe even destabilize its leadership and collapse this economy that has not happened. The ruble is at an all time high. And because gas prices have gone up so much, their economy has suffered but on the whole, it's still doing pretty well. The third contention that was made by advocates of this proxy war is that the sanctions would hurt Russia more than Europe. That has not happened. Europe is already hurting more than Russia and it's about with winter coming, it's going to hurt even more. And then the last thing, the last contention that was made, our support for Ukraine would rally the world around us and would strengthen the Western Alliance. And I think what we're starting to see is that the Western Alliance is fracturing and you see these gigantic protests in Prague and these other countries. So listen, these were the pillars of our Ukraine policy and they have all turned out to be flawed and wrong and they're becoming more wrong by the day. And yet there is no reappraisal of our policy that's coming out of Washington or London or Paris. None of these leaders are saying that there's a problem. So I think we're headed for not just an economic crisis but a political crisis in Europe because the fundamental tension between the needs of these people, which is to basically preserve their economy and to stay warm in their homes, and the ideology of their leaders who are fanatically committed to waging a proxy war against Russia, instead of finding a diplomatic outcome that was available last year, it was available in January, it was even available in March or April. That disconnect is the fundamental problem. All right, let's go Come on, let's talk about Kim
SPEAKER_00: Kay. Come on. There's no word on how much money she's raised for
SPEAKER_03: her private equity from from Russian oligarchs. But Kim will serve as co founder and co managing partner. The firm was co founder with 16 year Carlisle veteran Jay Sammons, who run day to day ops. And people may not know this, but Kim founded skims. That's her undergarment company in 2019. It was last valued at $3.2 billion. She is obviously got the largest following and is the biggest influencer in the world. 329 million followers on Instagram alone. Our friend Gavin Baker, responded was to be actually Mr. Beast actually just passed.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so those are two examples of people who can put a
SPEAKER_03: consumer packaged good in the world and make it number one instantly. Gavin Baker, a friend of ours tweeted that she adds massive value in this exact regard. What do you think, boys? Is she gonna have a Here's why I think here's why I think this is so important. Go
SPEAKER_00: I have a really strong belief that in the next 30 years or so, all traditional brands are going to die. And I think that what we're seeing happening right now, with the with the power of democratized media, like us creating a podcast, there are hundreds and now 1000s of individuals who have stood up and created their own brand and their own presence because of the content that they create on Twitch, on Twitter, on YouTube, etc. on podcasting. And as a result, they become the trusted sources of influence. And it's why they're called influencers. And ultimately, these influencers are becoming the brands they can like Mr. Beast launched the chocolate bar became like the number one chocolate bar in the country. He just opened up a burger restaurant last week. 10,000 people showed up number one, no more than that, like 100,000 or something. It was insane. It was like the number one burger restaurant opening or number one restaurant opening in history. Kylie Jenner launches a makeup brand takes off becomes this billion dollar brand. Kim Kardashian launches a clothing brand becomes a $3 billion brand. These are not just brands, they're businesses. And here's what I think is the most prescient M&A transaction of 2022. And you guys can tell me I'm crazy. I think the most important M&A deal of 2022 was when Penn Gaming bought Barstool Sports, because it shows that every consumer packaged good or every consumer services business ultimately needs to be a content business. And if you don't naturally have content creation in your blood, you have to go and buy a content business or you're going to die. And that's why I think all traditional brands that aren't oriented and built around content creation as their primary differentiating foundation will not survive and will not be able to compete effectively. And instead, what we're going to see is influencers and individuals that create content, build and distribute consumer goods and consumer services in a more efficient way. Because guess what? They've got distribution built in. Distribution is the number one problem with all consumer services and all consumer goods. So I think in the future, all advertising, all advertising and marketing gets replaced by content creation and content creation direct to consumers through the social media platforms becomes the mechanism by which people are aware of and buy goods and services. So that's why I think this deal is so important. And I think it's another one of what we're seeing in 2022, which is the stacking away towards the end of nameless faceless brands and the evolution of the influencer. I think Kim Kardashian is incredible. She is an incredible
SPEAKER_02: businesswoman. And the fact that she can stand up what would probably be like a multi-billion dollar private equity fund. And frankly, the companies that she invests in has a really compelling chance of being successful because she can basically pour so much visibility and notoriety and awareness of a brand into that company that that cap table. If I was a director, I would say, of course, give her whatever she wants. So that's the first thing. And the second thing I would say is that I think what Treeberg says is completely right. I think we're at a point in time where the biggest thing that if you want to build a consumer business, my advice to you as an entrepreneur is you need to build direct distribution and scale. Because what that translates into what Kim Kardashian proves what Mr. Beast is proving is it's all about subsidised CAC for you don't cost of customer acquisition, where you are not paying dollars to Facebook and Google. But instead, because you have direct distribution in a relationship with 10s or hundreds of millions of users, you can pour them into different experiences. And when you can do that, it's basically virtually zero cost, your entire margin structure of how you build a consumer business has changed overnight. So that's what they've proven. They've proven that you need to first build a brand. And then you can put you convert that brand into distribution funnel, and then to basically pour all kinds of services into it. And one of the services as it turns out, is now a private equity fund. So I think it's incredible. And I hope she's super successful.
SPEAKER_03: Sax, do you think this influencer strategy is here for and going to have a major impact on the venture business? I think it's pretty interesting. But I think it's pretty
SPEAKER_04: interesting in the consumer space for the reason freeberg said, which is distribution is so hard. So creating a great product is hard distributions even harder. And this is a realisation I had many years ago, and which is when I started doing Yammer. And then, you know, craft started focusing on SAS, which is, at least when you do a B2B product, you know, software as a service, you can charge enough money for it, that you can get a sales team to pencil. So in other words, you charge an enterprise enough money for the software that you can then pay a salesperson to go out and sell it. So there was always a distribution model built in for B2B. And that's why I've always liked that is there's a playbook there where if you just build a good enough piece of enterprise software, a good enough product, there's always going to be distribution for it. However, that's not true with consumer because consumer products are usually ad based. You can't generally charge that much if you can charge at all. They have high churn rates. And so therefore, B2C only works if you can find a very low cost scalable distribution channel. And I think that's what to freeberg's point, I think that's what the Kardashians are offering. It's clearly worked for their own products. I guess we'll see how extensible it is. But this is really the key challenge with all consumer stuff is just how do you find a very cheap way of distributing it. In the past, the consumer products I've been involved in, like PayPal or investing in social networks like Facebook, they were viral, then they were exponentially viral. So they were able to basically grow virally for free. So you either have to have, you know, extraordinary virality to the product or some other distribution trick that allows you to scale at low cost because you can't afford a sales team. And what we're seeing is the
SPEAKER_00: base of doing that is to create content. Mr. Beast created content for years before he built a big enough audience to do that. Kim Kardashian did content for years before she had a distribution to do that Dave Portnoy and Barstool Sports. I mean, the guy, Dave Portnoy, and this is incredible. Jason Kalukanis. Yeah, seriously. I mean, Portnoy was out rating pizza. And you know, now he has all these other kind of, you know, media and content kind of branches of his platform, but it's all content creation. And on top of that content, everybody's good at it. Freeburg. That's the other
SPEAKER_03: problem. I get it. But that's not what I'm saying. And that's my point. So let's say Coca Cola tried to build a content
SPEAKER_00: business today. How good would they be? Not very good. That's why they're going to end up dying, or they're going to end up needing to buy really interesting concept. I mean, do
SPEAKER_03: you think Mr. Beast Burger could beat McDonald's? Yes. And that's
SPEAKER_00: what I'm saying. That's my point. That's why I opened up
SPEAKER_03: kind of insane when you think about it. If Mr. Beast had 5000 franchisees. Yeah, but this is exactly my point that I
SPEAKER_00: said at the beginning, every traditional brand will get destroyed in 30 years. And they will get destroyed by the influencers that have built an audience through content creation. And now creating businesses on top of that, that compete with the traditional incumbents, not technology advantage businesses. I'm talking about core consumer goods and services. They also have to be good at gaming pen gaming does betting. You know, there's no real advantage in betting you build a sports book, that's it. The reason pen gaming bought bar school is they now have an audience that they can drive to their sports books. Right. And so the same will happen with still have to make a great product though. I
SPEAKER_03: mean, that's the other challenge here is can you also be a product savant? Can you be a virtuoso in building products in addition to being an influencer? Yeah, I think that's what Kim gets right. She makes great product and Mr. Beast. His first burger was not good. But now this new burger from what I understand is awesome. So you have to have both things switched on. Think about think about what's easier and what's
SPEAKER_00: harder. What's easier building an audience of 2 billion or a billion people that listen or watch you every week or building a great burger. It's a lot harder to build the audience. And so what will happen if it's a car, it's really hard. Yeah, it's not a I'm not talking about complicated cars and stuff or electronics. I'm talking about basic consumer goods, cereal, beverages, food, why not? Um, come on music audience like like all this stuff that's commodity, uh, you know, betting. I mean, this is not like a bar. Yeah. Betting is not a differentiated service offering to consumers. So ultimately, how do you differentiate? It's the it's the audience that you've now built the brand that you've built through the audience because of content creation. And so this is why I just want to point out distributed content creation, I think represents one of the most profound investing opportunities over the next decade. Because if you can give individuals the ability to make high quality content, they can scale an audience that that that now can be monetized in a thousand ways, not just putting friggin ad spots on YouTube, but there's 1000 products you as an as an influencer can build on top of your audience or sell to your audience. Boom, it really changes the whole landscape for CPG and services. And not to bring everything back to Mr.
SPEAKER_03: Beast, but a large number of his videos he told us he lost money on. So the videos at some point started losing him money. And it was an investment in that brand. And you know, it's it's clearly going to pay off now I saw Alexis Ohanian from you know, Reddit fame and 776 and the fun. He went to go see the burger place and he's like, what? Like there were at that point time 10,000 people online, Mr. Beast had to tell people please do not show up which of course, and 20,000 people show up. Anybody have plugs or anything that they want to get off their chest? sax? Anything else? I get out of here. Okay, we got a plug. I do. There is a an epidemic right now of the over prescription of
SPEAKER_02: amphetamines to children who are diagnosed with ADHD. It is an enormously important issue that doesn't just touch kids anymore but now also touches adults. You've seen a lot of really kind of bad companies that are over prescribing this stuff, get shut down and get sanctioned. So I just wanted to let anybody who's listening know. And this is me talking my book so take this with a grain of salt but there's a company that I'm involved in that has a video game that has been approved by the FDA to be a useful treatment for kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD. So if you have an eight to 11 year old, you can go and talk to your pediatrician to find out about the solution. It's called a killy. And it will allow you to prescribe to them a video game that they play 30 minutes a day. I just want to make sure people hear the name. It's a killy a
SPEAKER_03: ki li. So if you search for a killy a ki li interactive, I'll talk to your pediatrician. If you are a parent, a child that's
SPEAKER_02: dealing with this, go and read the label, have the doctor decide. Okay, so I'm not telling you to go do this, but I'm asking you to ask to you just look into it. But the idea is that there are drugs that affect your brain. And now we are increasingly able to design software that exquisitely targets certain aspects of your brain and are able to train them. And this is really the first example of such a thing that the FDA, who has reviewed all kinds of clinical data, has decided to approve. And so it's launching in the next few weeks. We've already written prescriptions to kids in every single state of the United States. And so to the extent that you're deciding what to do, or you have a child, or you have somebody in your family that is of age eight to 11 years old, that's dealing with this, I would just encourage you to learn about it. That is a plug. And you know, all the disclaimer. No, it's a great plug. I think we should at the end, just talk
SPEAKER_03: about some of these we're working on. And this is an incredible one, the number of kids on these, you know, ADHD drugs, attention, drugs, depression, anxiety, drugs, millions, it is out of control. There is an Listen, I don't want to tell parents at a parent. But I will say this is becoming a dependency. And the number of drugs I interview saw that New York Times where they put this one girl on 10 drugs, they're prescribing multiple drugs. And we don't know exactly what the long term effects of children using these are. And there are other solutions. I'm not judging any parent, but I'm not judging any parent. I'm not judging any teachers who's advising this, but this country and a society needs to really look deeply at this issue and say, should children because we didn't go on these drugs when we were kids, they didn't exist. And they haven't existed for all of humanity. And we need to think what kind of experiment are we running on 10 2030. You are in some schools, you're you're stating something so
SPEAKER_02: incredibly important. You know, when you have kids that are preteens and teenagers, their physiology is changing dramatically. And all of a sudden, when you introduce a chemical compound into all of that, you're exactly right. We don't really know what the outcomes are. And right now, I think a lot of people are worried that the over prescription of drugs in this kind of condition is going to create a next version of an opioid pandemic, or epidemic. And I think like that's the thing that's exactly the
SPEAKER_03: analogy. Shemagh right now, this statistic is crazy. This isn't the New York Times Express Scripts, a mail order pharmacy recently reported that prescriptions of antidepressants and teenagers rose 38% from 2015 to 29. We are prescribing these at an alarming rate. I have many parents in my circle who have kids who had what I would consider modest behavioral issues or modest attention issues. And they talked to me about this. And they felt in multiple cases, like they were being bullied or pressured by teachers to put their kids on behavioral drugs because their kids were behaving 10% as badly in middle school or high school. This is being used, I believe this is my personal belief. I know there are some kids who need these drugs, or I assume that there are. But I think this is being used to keep kids in their seats and to make it easier for parents to have to deal with what are normally the hardships of teenager, you know, teenagers and just be very careful parents about the extent to which you know, you might be being pressured, perhaps parents have told me they felt bullied into giving their kids these drugs. It really is infuriating to me. And I think it's really great that you we people should look into exercise talking to your kids, these things also work. We are going to go to cruise. We had a guidance
SPEAKER_02: counselor at our school, tell me that they thought that one of my children should just get put on these drugs. And I was like, it
SPEAKER_02: was the most random statement. And all I could get from her was that she just didn't want to deal with the fact that every now and then, this kid would just, you know, be exuberant.
SPEAKER_03: To your point, I want to kill their spirit. I had the same conversation. I don't want to get into it too much. But, you know, I think that these teachers now and I'm not saying it's all teachers. They are like, it's just easier to manage kids who are on focused energy drugs. And then there are some parents who want their kids to do really good on standardized testing. I would have done better on standardized testing if I was on Adderall or whatever these intention drugs are we everybody would score 10% better. But what does it do to the quality of your life long term? That's the question we need to ask about this stuff. And we don't have answers for it. I don't want to be Tom Cruise on this podcast. But there are other ways to keep, you know, kids healthy and to deal with these issues. And I think these things are to say they're overprescribed is going to be a huge understatement. We're gonna look at this like the opioid crisis, I guarantee it. I think that's exactly if you you start dope sick, right? And people thought they were doing the right thing. Oh, these people have pain, this drug manages pain. And then they found out like, Oh, yeah, you know what, this drug also makes you can make you an addict and could ruin your life. Great job on that investment. And I hope it works. Thank you, Sax. Anything else? Any companies in your portfolio? You want to give a shout out to we might as well get something out of this fucking pot since we're leaving $7 million on the fucking table. And you guys won't even let me run all in summit too. So I can get a half milli. I don't have anything to plug right now. But no company you
SPEAKER_04: invested in getting a plug for? How about you super got can we
SPEAKER_03: get some super gut calm in here? These bars taste great. Friedberg I love this. Thank you. Thank you. I literally just ordered another pack of them. I'm glad Thank you. Super gut. Do you have super gut calm? By the way, this is where I'm having Yeah, super gut calm. But I'm this is actually one of my
SPEAKER_00: D2C companies, where I'm having a lot of these conversations about how do you actually avoid just buying ads on Facebook, and Google? And how do you actually build an audience? Right? How do you ultimately convert your customers by creating content? And so this was originally unique, right? And then you changed it. Yeah, based on the science around,
SPEAKER_00: around resistance starts and how it changes the gut biome. And so, but this is general, I'm on the board of a couple of D2C companies. And it is universally the conversation right now, because in the last year, the cost of D2C, direct to consumer marketing on Facebook and Google is brutal, double tripled. And a lot of the unit economics are falling apart on D2C businesses, because of it, you know, costs a lot more to acquire the customer than you make from them. And so everyone's scrambling to figure out, okay, how do I acquire customers. And that's where this content creation strategy is becoming a critical linchpin for most consumer businesses. Now, it's a really important part. I think a couple of us are investors in
SPEAKER_03: H sleep. And they were like, please let us advertise on walling. I was like, sorry, no ads, but I'll shut you out here. H sleep. It's great product. I have a plug, but I want to
SPEAKER_04: save it. So I can fucking drop a plug for No, no, the product
SPEAKER_03: hasn't launched yet. Give me like a month. All right. And if
SPEAKER_03: anybody wants to be a venture investor, Jason at calicanus.com to come to one of my webinars and see my last fun since we started allowing all these plugs. I thought we had a set
SPEAKER_04: up. It was a setup. I just wanted to do a round up a plug
SPEAKER_03: so I can get mine in. So I was being generous. Work plan worked. I got you on the hook for yours. What was your what
SPEAKER_00: was your plug? Were you doing your venture fund? I'm doing one for plugging stuff. I'll plug the calicanus.com if you
SPEAKER_03: want to call it up. We're all in. Everybody is calling up. Let's do what you know we should do a call in. We should all do like an after hours where we take questions from the audience. That would be great. I would do that. Yeah, we do that. Can I get a point? All right, let's go everybody. This has been all in episode 95. Wait, wait, wait, more seconds. Jake out. That was that was another deal you turned down
SPEAKER_04: just like the Ukraine deal. This is a theme here is that you turn down deals you later regret the 9 months later you admit I was right. You should have taken the deal. I should take the deal. Look how hard Chamath is crashing right now.
SPEAKER_00: Look at him. Look at him. What time is it there? It's like 1130 right? Midnight. It's 1130. It's 1130. That's okay. I'm
SPEAKER_02: losing my I lost my voice. I lost my voice. Send us an invite for AMA for the four of us on calling. Calling. Okay, yeah,
SPEAKER_00: just remember. Maybe. Yeah, live AMA live AMA with a I'm gonna show a call. I'll show up. Maybe I'll show up.
SPEAKER_02: Jay. Yeah, I'll show up. I'd be happy to do it. I'm back in the United States tomorrow. All right. Well, I'm gonna play
SPEAKER_03: poker in 14 hours. Two hours. If you can, you're gonna ask everybody to come play. We'll meet you at the airport. We'll pick you up from the airport. We'll pick up the airport. We'll play Chinese poker in the back of the car. All right, everybody. It's been episode 95. Better than we thought it would be.
SPEAKER_04: Suck a lozenge, Chamath. You need something. A little honey tea.
SPEAKER_02: I need a lozenge. I have some tea over there. Good. I love you
SPEAKER_03: guys. Love you besties. See you soon. We'll let your winners
SPEAKER_04: ride. Rain Man David Saks. And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you.
SPEAKER_01: Besties are gone. That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Oh man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge because they're all just it's like it's like sexual tension but they just need to release them out.
