0:00
Chamath, man, I am so excited to talk to you.
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0:03
It's been a long time coming. It has been.
0:06
We've tried to organize, uh, I think for many months, if maybe if not a year, and I just, uh, um, I think both of our schedules were a little tight, um, and, uh, but then I had to reschedule it once or twice, so I'm sorry about that. Oh, no worries.
0:19
Originally, we were supposed to do it in Toronto, and then, uh, well, the world changed. The world has changed.
0:26
Hey, every time I look around, you're on the news, man. What's up with that?
0:30
Well, I think that it's sometimes valuable when you can actually just like speak the truth.
0:36
Not sometimes, all the time.
0:39
Uh, and I think that, um, most people are pretty guarded cuz they have to be.
0:43
I don't think they're necessarily always in a position to be as candid as they want to be.
0:48
Um, and, uh, I think that in moments of, sort of, just clarity, I have, you know, constantly just tried to say what I feel, and, um, I think that that resonates with a lot of people.
1:02
It, oh, well, it definitely does.
1:02
I tweeted out today that you were coming on the show, and I think we had like over a thousand replies, and people, they, everything from like, ask him what I should do with my life, to, how should I think about the future, to, what should I invest in?
1:14
You're like everybody's guru, man.
1:18
Uh, I mean, I I think Naval is the guru, um, but, uh, I'm the uh, brown brother from another mother.
1:25
I, uh, I I think of that, I think that I've gone through a lot of, uh, you know, kind of like ordinary people [ __ ] and, um, I think I talk about it in really simple, plain-spoken terms, and I think that that's really useful to people cuz it demystifies a lot of things, and just makes it, um, kind of more normal.
1:45
And, um, you know, that's been a real theme of my life is just realizing that a lot of the things that I went through, uh, is is normal, um, and feeling part of a pack, um, is really helpful, actually.
1:57
It's been really helpful for me cuz it's helped kind of like regulate my sense of self-worth and lift it up in moments where I felt pretty crappy about myself.
2:07
And, um, that's just resulted in better outcomes.
2:09
So, I think like a lot of what I talk about, I think folks relate to cuz I speak to it from through that lens.
2:15
And, um, Yeah, I I just think that's a really, um, good place to be, actually.
2:21
It's taken me a long time to get to that place, but it's a good place.
2:25
Can we double click on that for a second?
2:26
I mean, you you've got an interesting background, right?
2:27
You worked at AOL, you went to Facebook, you were a billionaire at 32, you own a sports team.
2:33
From the outside looking in, you had the most amazing life, but on the inside looking out, you didn't feel that way. Yeah.
2:42
I think a lot of people, um, have to do things that, um, are motivated by other people's perceptions of them, and also motivated, um, by the pressure that's exerted, uh, by the people that are very closely around you.
2:59
That sometimes can be your friends, it can be your family.
3:03
Um, and I was very much, uh, of that category.
3:06
So, I was kind of just, you know, meandering through life.
3:08
Now, that meandering turned out to have, um, really good outcomes in some respects, um, The problem was that all it was doing was just, uh, sort of like, you know, avoiding the inevitable.
3:24
And the inevitable is this moment that I think everybody goes through where they're asking themselves whether they've lived a completely fulfilling life the way that they define it.
3:35
You know, what I'll say to you is that I think that, um, sort of, not even necessarily millennials, but, you know, zoomers underneath them, um, they're the most honest, um, of any generation, uh, about what makes them happy.
3:50
And you see that in you know, the way that they dress, the music that they listen to, the media that they consume, um the way that they um you know, sort of like uh push back on kind of like a more corporate kind of um you know, tone and things.
4:12
Um And they're willing to be happy in a way that they've defined for themselves.
4:15
Uh in my generation of 44, that's not how it goes down.
4:21
The way that it goes down is you go to the best school you can.
4:22
Um you take on as much debt as you need to.
4:29
Um you try to get the most credential job after college.
4:31
Um you know, you kind of just check the box.
4:35
You, you know, find, you know, uh a reasonable person that you marry. You know, you have 2. 5 kids.
4:42
You move buy a house in the suburbs. You save for retirement.
4:47
And I just think for a lot of people they've realized that that's not the path the maximum fulfillment and that being happy um actually get generates also better outcomes.
4:57
Um you know, you have better artists, you have better engineers, you have better everything if people are ultimately just happier.
5:02
Um and I think that generation of people know that a lot more inherently than people in my generation or boomers and the generation above me, too.
5:14
W- What did you come out of that with?
5:16
How did you define happiness at the end of this?
5:18
You you sort of went through through this journey.
5:22
There's a great um article.
5:24
Uh it's not Sorry, it's not even an article.
5:26
It's um it's the obituary of Steve Jobs written by his um sister.
5:29
Um Uh and she wrote it, Mona Simpson.
5:33
She wrote it in the New York Times uh upon his death.
5:38
And there's just a paragraph in there.
5:41
But I think the phrase that he said was like sort of like, "Oh, wow."
5:45
And he just kept repeating, "Oh, wow, um, as he was passing away.
5:49
And I've interpreted what that may have meant.
5:51
I have no idea, obviously, cuz he's not around to tell us that that's what happened, but I have this idea, this sensation that he sees his family, he thinks about the totality of his life lived, and he was happy.
6:06
Um, and uh, but think of what that happiness was able to create, not just for his family, but for the entire world.
6:11
Um, and so I do think that, you know, on the one hand, you could say, you know, he was fanatical, he was a tyrant, he was hard to work for, you know, etc. , etc.
6:20
, but on the other hand, maybe there's a different way of seeing it, which is that he was very content.
6:26
He had a family that loved him.
6:28
He had a family that he loved.
6:30
And as a result of that happiness, he was able to leave that sanctuary, go to work, and take that happiness and channel it into doing amazing things for other people.
6:39
That's uh, a pretty cool idea.
6:41
And so, um, I think that what I would like to live through is that version, um, of the truth for me.
6:51
Um, that oh wow, oh wow, oh wow idea, um, and how do I define it?
6:58
And um, I didn't even know that that should be a way to live my life earlier on.
7:05
And, you know, when you're talking to me today as a, you know, 44-year-old, um, guy, is I've learned that there are things that give me these oh wow sensations that I just absolutely love.
7:17
I'll I'll just name a couple.
7:19
They're, you know, even today this happened.
7:22
I I, you know, I'm I'm working a lot these days, just really kind of grinding on a lot of stuff, and you know, these are high-pressure decisions that I'm making a lot of the time for me, and so they consume a lot of my mental mind with and bandwidth, and um, it's really exhausting.
7:38
And uh, if there's pressure, and you know, sometimes I honestly I just feel like like I just need to just like cry.
7:43
Like I'm just like I feel really stressed out these moments and you know, I'm fighting uphill I feel like.
7:50
Um And today I was driving to the office and I was having one of those moments and I turned around and I went back home and I went to see each of my four children and I kissed them and I went to see my partner and I kissed her and um I felt just this moment of just sheer happiness.
8:12
Like I felt like that's what I have accomplished.
8:15
Uh I built a sanctuary for my family filled with love.
8:20
And um and then I got into the car and I came to the office and uh that's an oh wow moment.
8:25
Um Every summer now I have these oh wow moments because um my partner's Italian and um I you know, had never really spent a lot of time in Europe but in the last four years I spent it I see a lot of time in the summers and my children and I have fallen in love with Italians.
8:44
I mean and what have we learned?
8:48
You know, we've learned to like love the food, love the culture, the boisterousness, the loudness, the love, the intensity, the energy and it's an it's I think about it now and I just it's like wow. I love it.
9:03
So I I've learned to find things that I really appreciate.
9:06
A third one and I'll just That is I have a group of friends and we play poker together.
9:13
And if I think about how happy it makes me, there's a thing that we do which is we show up at 4:00 we play until about 6:30 and then we have a dinner together like a family dinner on a long table and then we go back and we play for a few more hours.
9:28
That stopped when the coronavirus pandemic started because we couldn't come together.
9:33
Um we've we've been able to get a bunch of rapid tests and so for the first time this Saturday we're going to come together and play.
9:43
And I think about this and I'm just like, oh wow, I I cannot wait to see them.
9:48
Um so you know, and I think about this, Shane, none of that um is about CNBC or, you know, um a good successful company.
9:59
Those are important and those are good demarcations of progress.
10:04
Um but those aren't my oh wow moments anymore.
10:06
And when I put too much pressure and value in those being the oh wow oh wow moments, I got distracted and I became unhappy.
10:13
And as long as I stay centered on these other things, I have so much more energy to come and work on those first-order set of, you know, business priorities and and get things done.
10:22
And I and I and I'm trying to achieve something that is at the very early stages, um which is not done yet.
10:30
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, but before we get there, there's a couple rabbit holes that I sort of want to explore there.
10:34
You mentioned Zoomers were willing to speak truth, their truth, uh pretty easily and and it was harder for our generation, but you're you're also, you know, you're full of controversy sometimes.
10:45
Is there you know, it doesn't strike me that you have a problem speaking your truth or you you've ever not said what you felt is Well, it's not that I've always not.
10:56
I think that I um I've learned to lie at a very young age um because lying I think is one of the most simple coping mechanisms that we all have.
11:12
And um lying manifests in all kinds of very subtle corrosive ways.
11:19
Um you know, when I was growing up I had a sort of, you know, I have a I have a family who fundamentally we all love each other, but and it's a very complicated contorted form of love because it's punctuated with you know, some mental health issues, um you know, Okay.
11:37
alcoholism, you know, depression, poverty, um and so, you know, when I was a young person, the way that I coped is to lie. Are you okay? I'm fine. Did you do that? I didn't do that.
11:50
You know, where were you? Nowhere.
11:52
How did you do on that test? Fine.
11:56
It was um I learned to be evasive.
12:00
And what that created was a deep-seated pattern of lying and avoidance.
12:08
And, you know, people can say maybe lying is not what that is, but at the basic, you know, kind of just to simplify it, um you know, I was a you know, I learned to lie uh to cope.
12:19
Um And uh I think that at some point um I think almost sort of at a very, you know, physiological, biological level, um that's not what any of us want to be. Yeah.
12:33
Um and so, I think that I had almost this form of organ rejection.
12:38
Um and so, I had to almost, you know, go to the other end of the spectrum.
12:45
Almost in a way of atoning for all of the years of lies and all of the accumulated mistruths or half-truths or evasiveness, whether that was in my personal life or my business life.
12:58
Um and the first moment of clarity around that was actually when I went to work at Facebook, because for the first time I was unbelievably candid, and it was such a cathartic release.
13:08
Because I could be, you know, almost curmudgeonly in my candor.
13:13
Um so much so that at points probably I was a bit of a caricature, because, you know, there was this guy, me, who seemed very, you know, almost acerbic at times.
13:20
Um Just a little rough around the edges.
13:24
Um And I took it to an extreme there.
13:27
Um, and then in the early parts of uh Social Capital, I actually think I reverted.
13:35
And um I was lying more again.
13:38
Um, because it was, you know, uh I was I was filled with a new level and a new kind of insecurity around, you know, I felt like an impostor in venture capital.
13:48
I felt like, you know, I didn't earn the right to start a fund.
13:50
I didn't and I gave myself all of these hurdles that I put in front of me mentally and my solution was to, you know, try to be evasive and to lie my way through them.
14:02
Um, and then in 2016 and 17, um again, I think I had an even much more cathartic form of uh Odin rejection around it and I had to sort of recalibrate uh the life around me so that I could stop lying and um I think in that I think you you're finding a person that tries to be truthful.
14:22
Um, as often as as I can.
14:25
And uh often times what that means is saying the uncomfortable thing, but it's the thing that needs to be said.
14:31
And I think that there's a lot of people who appreciate that because they themselves feel like they're sometimes caught in positions where they have to be evasive or they have to lie in order to cope.
14:44
Um, and you know, if they themselves aren't in a position to do it, I think they appreciate when others can be.
14:50
Um, and I think that a lot of people have a very positive reaction to that and I think that's in part what what I think people get a sensation uh when they interact with me sometimes.
14:59
So, I'm not sure I'm necessarily controversial.
15:03
Um, I do think that I'm behaving in a way that I think a lot of folks would love to be in a position to do as well. Right.
15:13
I I don't think it's actually correlated to money.
15:17
Um, I think that it's more correlated to self-worth and the comfort that you have with yourself, the limitations that you have, and then, you know, the ability to love yourself despite those limitations.
15:33
That's a process that um too few of us start.
15:36
A- A- And it's like I said, it's not a um a money thing.
15:42
It's a it's a happiness thing.
15:44
So, closing the loop on how you started, I think that, you know, Zoomers in this interesting way see all these generations, you know, of folks that are older than them, you know, 30-year-old, 40-year-old, 50-year-old, 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 80-year-olds.
15:59
And we live long enough now where they see multiple generations of evasiveness and unhappiness, really. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
16:09
Uh and and they see similarities in all of us that they're smart enough to decide that they don't want to exhibit because, you know, it would it would be one thing, Shane, if you saw an 80-year-old.
16:23
Well, you could say, "Oh, I'm not going to be like that person."
16:24
But then you see a 70-year-old and you're like, "Wow, that's just a junior version of the 80-year-old."
16:29
And then you see a 60-year-old and you see them. And a 50-year-old.
16:31
And because we're all alive, you know, the 20-year-old sees eight generations of people ahead of them and they're like, "Wait a minute, something here is wrong."
16:40
And they're smart enough to say, "What are the commonalities of all these folks?"
16:45
And they choose to be different.
16:46
Do you still deal with imposter syndrome? All the time.
16:50
What do you tell yourself in those moments?
16:52
Uh you know, I try it First of all, I I I I talk to my partner.
16:55
She has been um kind of my spiritual partner.
17:06
Um my kind of like co-pilot.
17:07
Um because she really has an enormous level of empathy and care around her own mental health and, you know, uh the mental health of our family.
17:20
And um so we talk a lot, you know, and we talk about nonsense and serious things and everything in between, but we just talk.
17:29
And uh I found that as a man I was taught that talking is weak.
17:38
Uh I also found that as a immigrant man I was taught that talking about emotions was doubly weak.
17:46
Um and then I was, you know, sort of taught as kind of you know, like in this industry that um you know, talking is awkward.
17:54
You put all these things together and um you know, the biggest thing that I found that has helped me is just talking. Um and being open.
18:05
Um and it starts with her.
18:10
My kids, I'm really open and, you know, transparent with my kids.
18:12
They think I'm a, you know, basically a [ __ ] loser.
18:16
Uh I think that that's really cool.
18:16
Um you know, they they just they just roll their eyes every time that I start talking cuz it's like some stupid diatribe, but all of these things help me stay um really connected to uh you know, the goal of being truthful.
18:35
That helps me stay connected to the goal of being happy, to celebrate these oh wow kind of moments in my life. Um that helps me.
18:42
But to be honest with you, um that has to be an active process um for me um because the that thing that you just said change is overpowering for me.
18:53
The the sense of being an impostor is overpowering.
18:59
Um and it's um it's like this dragon that I've been trying to slay my whole life and I haven't been able to.
19:08
Um and the more kind of I don't even want to say success, but yeah, I guess like the more um like notches up the ladder I go, the more severe it feels um and the harder it is for me to fight it back.
19:27
So, um you know, I had this conversation with Nat yesterday and you know, I said to her like, yeah, I feel like this is why so many people just give up because it's easier to do it than to fight and to solve the real root cause of what allows you to get to the next level of success.
19:44
That's really why, you know, you have to look at folks that have really overcome this stuff in however way they've done it and achieved a level of success and really celebrate them cuz they're um um they have a level of mental fortitude that is exceptional.
19:56
But yeah, I'm I'm I'm dealing with it right now, this imposter syndrome and uh I I it's I think it'll be a battle I fight my whole life.
20:04
You know, some people other people have different battles, but that that is definitely mine. What keeps you going?
20:08
I mean, you could just fold up, walk away, live an amazing life you and generations of your your heirs.
20:17
What what keeps you sort of pushing through this, confronting this dragon?
20:23
Um I I I I just think I I do think that I get a level of enjoyment from it.
20:25
Um you know, this idea of like uh you know, can I beat it?
20:30
Um I like how I feel when I'm more connected to the things that make me happy.
20:39
Um I like how I feel when I think like when I think that I am doing things that uh the younger version of me would be proud of.
20:49
Um Not the older version.
20:51
It's it's interesting like a lot of people think like, you know, like at your deathbed. Mhm.
20:56
And uh I think the exact opposite.
20:56
I think like, you know, would the 22-year-old self, you know, interacting with this person, you know, with the 16-year-old person like think, "Wow, that guy is uh that's a legit human being.
21:09
Like, he's, you know, he's putting himself out there trying."
21:14
Uh so, I'm motivated to keep kind of grinding and getting better.
21:20
Um and uh just seeing what the upper bound is. It's interesting.
21:24
A lot of a lot of people are like, "Oh, if I just had like $10 million or something, I'd just walk away."
21:29
And I'm like, "Well, that's probably the reason you might never have $10 million, right?
21:32
Because the people that achieve that keep pushing and keep struggling and can't actually walk away in some way."
21:40
I think that um money accelerates um the point at which you can declare yourself free. Mhm. And feel emancipated.
21:51
Like, I do think that money is a it liberates people. It gives them freedom.
21:58
Um but going back to what we were saying before, it doesn't make you happier.
22:00
And if you are ill-equipped to then run that race the happiness race um and you do it with money uh it's destructive.
22:16
It's it's more destructive than if you do it without money.
22:20
Because, you know, if you're unhappy and you're unconstructively trying to find your happiness and you have cash, you know, you'll end up, you know, gambling, broke, dead, high, you know, like it's all the typical clichés.
22:32
Um they're and they they played themselves out over, you know, many generations and they'll continue to do so.
22:39
So, um yeah, I I think that like uh this is why I think people can um separate these two paths and actually work on them concurrently.
22:52
One is the path to freedom and the second is the path to happiness.
22:58
I think the path to happiness is an internal process.
23:02
But the path to freedom, that I can help with.
23:05
You know, because I think I've learned an accumulated amount of knowledge here and uh it's readily transferable.
23:10
The happiness path is not because each of us have our own lived experience which is so different from everybody else's.
23:17
And so all you can do is kind of listen to other folks and decide you're going to start for yourself.
23:22
Um but the answers are not obvious and it's all iteration.
23:28
But the path to freedom uh is easily copied.
23:33
Um and I think that uh you know, that that's sort of sort of what uh what motivates me as well.
23:37
This idea that I can sort of, you know, all that accumulated knowledge base, I can just hand it off to folks and if they can benefit from it, that would be great.
23:49
What is the path to freedom?
23:52
Um well, sort of financial freedom.
23:52
So I think I think um I think that if more people believed that they could be economically self-sufficient, I think that it would solve a lot of the societal implications of inequity.
24:18
So, you know, today we have kind of like this very polarized body politic really where on one hand there are folks that, you know, um have over um sort of indexed on what I would call absolute freedom and intent but it has no plan.
24:44
And on the other side, it's sort of over-indexed on an nanny state with no plan.
24:51
Both of them are very much the same in that neither of them have a credible plan.
24:55
And in the middle, there's a of people that are just exhausted.
25:01
And that's a that's a perfect boundary condition for you know, a lot of the inequity that that exists today in society and a lot of the frustration that people feel as a result of it.
25:11
So, to me if we can give people a more reasonable road map where they can execute it, they can learn, and they can have a community of other like-minded folks that can put in the time and the work and help each other over, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years to compound capital, no matter how small, but just to start.
25:37
I think you'd be surprised at how many people are intellectually capable of achieving financial freedom on their own.
25:45
And in that I think that there's um there's a path out of this kind of like very depressing kind of s- you know, state that we're in.
25:55
Um so that that I think is the opportunity is So, you know, I'll give you a an example.
26:03
Um in 2015 I think we started to really pay attention to Tesla.
26:11
Um and uh you know, we bought these convertible bonds and, you know, we thought they were really great you know, risk-adjusted because, you know, we weren't sure whether the shorts were going to win and drive the company into the ground, but we were really sure we wanted to bet on Elon.
26:28
Long story short it all kind of worked out and now you look back and you're like, "My gosh, this is incredible."
26:34
But there was so much knowledge that helped us feel like we were making the right decision that existed in this long tail of people who took it upon themselves to build a community of people that wanted to understand the company, not necessarily just to be a blind cheerleader, but they would really go and double click, and they were doing a level of work that was incredible.
26:59
And I thought that was so interesting because I thought to myself, you know, typically what would happen is you would put your money into a bank a bank account, you would open up a brokerage account.
27:08
Maybe you would get access to some research from one of the banks.
27:10
You would read it, or maybe an advisor would recommend something to you, or maybe you'd end up on some random community and read some random forum and buy something.
27:22
But instead, these were like physicists and, you know, chemists and, you know, financial people all coming together to understand these things.
27:29
They were writing research notes, they were putting out, you know, YouTube uh uh video clips.
27:35
And if you took the time to understand it, that community um was helping you understand something really important that was happening in the world.
27:45
And you could have financially uh participated because you could just go and buy that.
27:50
Uh and it would have worked.
27:52
Now, let's extrapolate that idea.
27:56
Um forget Tesla for a second.
27:58
There's this incredible thing that's happening, which is that we are starting to uh you know, financialize everything. Right?
28:08
We're starting to create financial increments attached to anything you can imagine.
28:12
Meaning, you know, it used to be the case that you would only buy sneakers.
28:19
Now, you buy and sell sneakers, and you know, the marketplace that that that is the leader in that, you know, Goat, um today just announced that they raised, you know, $200 million at an almost $2 billion valuation.
28:32
Um so, is it a is it an e-commerce marketplace? Maybe.
28:38
Uh I look at it as a financial market.
28:40
They've, you know, they fractionalized shoes, essentially.
28:44
Um and they fractionalized uh and they wrapped a financial transaction layer around taste and taste making.
28:53
Um, you know, there's there's a company called Pipe.
28:55
There's a company called Rally Road.
28:56
All these folks, you know, are, you know, uh fractionalizing ownership of all kinds of things.
29:02
There's crypto, obviously. Um, there's stocks.
29:04
There's, you know, specific bonds.
29:06
So, the point is the surface area the investable universe is growing.
29:13
Um, some of it is still very regulated.
29:16
Some of it is really unregulated.
29:18
But, the trend is obvious.
29:20
So, we're going to financialize everything.
29:24
And we're going to fractionalize ownership of probably everything.
29:28
And so, what there's an opportunity now to do is to curate and cultivate a community around that to help people.
29:35
And that's really what I would like to do.
29:36
I think that it would be a really useful thing to level the playing field so that whether you're, you know, mom and pop school teacher with 5 or 10K, you're a new grad with, you know, a thousand K that they had saved up, or whether you're an accredited investor, I don't judge.
29:54
I would like to treat them all equally.
29:57
And I would like to say, "Look, I've made some mistakes. I've had some winners.
30:02
I've really learned how to allocate capital.
30:03
Here's how I see the world.
30:07
And here are ways in which I think that you could participate beside me as my partner.
30:12
And if you want to, you can.
30:15
Um, and I'll always put, you know, my money on the line so that you know that I am not trying to, you know, surreptitiously become an agent. I am a principal.
30:27
Um, and I think that if we can organize that in some useful way, um, I think that we can help a lot of people achieve uh freedom.
30:35
And if they're concurrently working on happiness, um, I I you'll really [ __ ] some [ __ ] up and fix some stuff. He'll be really good.
30:45
You said you you in a previous, I think interview or maybe on Twitter that your job was to be an observer of the present.
30:53
I was wondering if you didn't double click on that.
30:56
Yeah, I'll I'll I'll give you um something that may, you know, drive your listeners and viewers crazy.
31:04
Let's look at the um 2020 election from first principles.
31:07
So let's really look at it from first principles.
31:13
Um well, let's think about foreign policy.
31:18
Um and foreign policy, I think are really four things, but it really comes down to three things.
31:23
So number one are sort of like nefarious state actors, right?
31:28
Uh let's just let's just use an example illustratively, Russia.
31:33
Um well, I think most people feel like, you know, Russia uh is pretty sketchy and uh um you know, they're generally, quote unquote, bad.
31:42
Um okay, well, let's uh let's let's think about another state actor.
31:48
Um you know, North Korea.
31:49
Uh I don't think you're going to see a lot of people jump up on either side of the aisle supporting North Korea.
31:55
Um let's think about um uh China.
31:59
Um I think that we've all realized that uh you know, the bloom is off the rose off the rose and that, you know, we've allowed globalization a strain of globalization that has put America strategically on our back heels and that doesn't make any sense.
32:13
You know, we may not have access to our own semiconductors.
32:16
We don't have access to critical, you know, uh rare earth metals to drive electrification.
32:20
We, you know, uh have outsourced critical parts of our health care infrastructure um to folks that um you know, can dictate whether we can take care of our our own people.
32:33
You know, that that doesn't make any sense, right?
32:34
Everybody believes that now.
32:36
Um let's take the Middle East.
32:36
Uh, you know, the Middle East was incredibly critical uh because, you know, a handful of Western countries coming out of World War II essentially divvied up and and built some artificial maps uh essentially to make sure that we had access to this precious resource, oil.
32:52
Uh, well, you know, in 2020, we now have, you know, a 20- or 30-year shot clock where we've decided that where we're going to stop burning oil.
32:58
You know, we've essentially already stopped burning coal and it's just a matter of time till we stop burning fossil fuels.
33:05
Well, at that point, the strategic relevance of the Middle East decays significantly.
33:11
So, think about that now.
33:11
So, from a foreign policy perspective, both sides basically see the world in the exact same way, Democrats and Republicans.
33:19
They both hate Russia, they both hate China, and they both think that energy independence means that the Middle East won't matter.
33:26
Wow, that's observing the present.
33:29
Um, let's take a different example.
33:32
Think about uh monetary and fiscal policy.
33:37
Whether we like it or not, um, we used to be in a world where fiscal policy and monetary policy were separate.
33:47
Sometimes they would be along the same lines, but they were separate bodies acting independently.
33:54
Now, the Treasury and the Fed are inexorably intertwined.
33:59
And it's not just in the United States.
34:01
If you look at it this problem in um, you know, Western democracies in in Europe, it's the same situation. This is crazy, right?
34:08
We have inexorably brought together fiscal and monetary policy. That's just the facts.
34:18
Now, let's look at spending.
34:20
Whether you call it the Green New Deal on the left or the infrastructure bill on the right, we are going to spend in the next decade tens of trillions of dollars to try to dig ourselves out of this unemployment and GDP hole that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. That's going to happen.
34:43
Neither candidate will come to the American people and say, "We want to spend a trillion dollars on, you know, digging up coal from the ground and burning it."
34:54
Coal-fired power plants, it's not going to happen.
34:56
One's going to call it a green new deal, the other person's going to call it infrastructure spending, but we're going to, you know, radically change the face of how America operates as a functional economy, okay?
35:08
And it's relatively predictable, in my opinion, how they're going to spend that money.
35:16
So, if I'm a keen observer of the present, if I would put all of that together, Jen, I'll say something very controversial, which is we have an election that is now actually of style and not of substance.
35:28
Now, that doesn't mean it's not important, but substantively, the positions on critical matters of foreign policy, domestic monetary and fiscal policy, and spending will roughly be plus or minus the same.
35:47
It takes a lot of mental fortitude to think through it and look at it that way and not let one's own biases jump in uh because it will tear you into, you know, a thousand different mental pieces.
36:01
But, that's what I mean by being a keen observer of the present.
36:02
So, okay, what does this election come down to?
36:07
I think it comes down to political correctness versus cancel culture.
36:13
If I had to kind of summarize it in a nutshell, that's what it is.
36:18
And I think that people will vote um on November 3rd about which outcome they want.
36:26
Because substantively in action, the spending patterns, the policy decisions, um will roughly be the same.
36:32
And again, see, it's such a controversial thing, and I think people can just go absolutely crazy to hear somebody say that.
36:40
They're going to go crazy when I don't ask you who you predict will win, but what I really want to know is how do you take that, and then what do you do with that in the future?
36:47
You said it, "Okay, well, this is going to be a predictable path of spending."
36:51
How do you as an investor then take that knowledge Fab- fabulous question.
36:57
So, this goes back to what I'm trying to do, which is if I can observe the present in a reasonably unemotional and detached way, to your point, I can put a plan together.
37:11
And when I have a plan, you know, that plan is specifically for me oriented around how I'm going to make sure that the ideas that I want to see exist in the world win.
37:24
And, you know, I I And this is going to sound maybe turn people off the way I say it, but at my level of capital, that's what I can do.
37:31
I can vote with my dollars to really make things come to life, and I think that that um I really take that job seriously.
37:39
And and I and I and I aim to do that now, which is like, "Okay, uh I'm learning how to be happy, you know, I I've achieved a level of freedom, but now it's about change, and I want to implement my form of change.
37:49
And I want to see that in the world.
37:51
So, I'm trying to figure out how my ideas have a better chance of succeeding, and then I want to make sure that I implement a plan to make that happen.
38:00
And then, that adds to my knowledge base, and then my hope is to share that with other people so that they can then learn from that as they will, and maybe they can they can also do their version of the of the same thing.
38:10
So, you know, if I was really yeah, I was 6 years old in 1980, or no, 4 years old in 1980.
38:18
But imagine I was 34 years old, or 44 years old.
38:23
I would have woken up and I would have said, "Read the paper."
38:24
Doesn't matter how much money I would have had. Okay?
38:27
If I knew then what I know now.
38:32
I would wake up in 1980 and say, "Oh my god, the 30-year rate is at, you know, 15, 16% interest rate."
38:40
Uh "Man, this thing, you know, if I had to take a guess, um I really believe in the productivity and the ingenuity of America.
38:47
I'm just going to be uh I'm going to take a guess that 15% goes to zero before 15% goes to 50%."
38:58
And you would have been really right.
39:01
And '80s, '90s, the 2000s, and now the 2010s, had you just been levered long equities, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. right?
39:09
You would have made a fortune.
39:11
And you would have been right, and you would have achieved freedom.
39:12
It doesn't matter whether you started with a dollar, $10, $1,000, $10,000, $10 million.
39:19
You would have been unbelievably rich.
39:22
And in many ways, you know, Buffett's simplicity, Warren's elegance of his mental model, and I'm not trying to diminish his skill by saying this, is is a keen observer of this most important high-level order idea, which is that rates are going to zero, productivity is going to go up, ingenuity, the resourcefulness of America goes up. I want to be long that. I'm long equities.
39:49
You know, um it would have worked.
39:49
Now, Shane, where are we?
39:52
Well, we're rates at zero, right?
39:54
So, okay, so let's take our all cumulative knowledge and look at today.
39:57
Let's just be a keen observer of the present. Rates are at zero.
39:59
Where are they going to go?
40:03
Are they going to go to -5 or +5?
40:07
Well, now the key question is um well, probably on the margin, you know, uh you your instinctive reaction will be plus five.
40:19
Um and I would say, "Why?"
40:22
I mean, what Why is zero some artificial number where everything starts and stops?
40:27
This is not like temperature.
40:29
It's not like we're saying it's absolute zero, right?
40:32
It's not like there is no colder temperature than, you know, 200 whatever Kelvin, 260 something Kelvin or whatever it is. Uh it's just zero.
40:40
It's like zero degrees Celsius.
40:42
Can you have negative one degree Celsius? Of course.
40:44
Ask anybody that lives in the Midwest.
40:47
Um you know, or the East Coast.
40:49
Um so, could rates go negative? Yeah. Could rates go positive? Well, I don't know.
40:54
If I'm observing the present, what I would say is um you know, the overwhelming majority of the value in the last 10 years has been about educating billions of people all around the world um that things are roughly deflationary.
41:12
Meaning, as long as you wait tomorrow and delay gratification, somebody will show up and give you more for less, right?
41:20
You know, I I had a I don't know, I'm making up a name of a company.
41:23
I had a storage account on drive. com.
41:25
All of a sudden, Dropbox showed up and said, "More for less."
41:32
And then I was using Dropbox for a while and then Google Drive showed up and said, "Even more for even less."
41:38
And I'm pretty sure that the next person that figures out how to do storage and scale will come up with even even more for even even less.
41:48
Facebook did the same thing, you know, uh Spotify does the same thing, Netflix does the same thing.
41:52
All these things that create so much value are training us psychologically to behave in deflationary ways, to delay gratification slightly, or to make the cost of switching so low that even if you don't want to delay gratification, you can just change your mind later and cop to the next thing that gives you more for less.
42:12
So, it is very conceivable that we are in a deflationary posture for a long time.
42:17
Now, it's also possible that, you know, uh inflation could go up.
42:20
So, my kind of view is, well, I need to answer this problem in a different way.
42:28
And the way that I would try to answer this problem is to say to myself, well, what sectors of the economy will benefit irrespective of whether we go to -5 or +5?
42:40
Because I don't know what the answer to that question is.
42:41
It'll be obvious in hindsight, but it was not obvious today.
42:45
And so, I construct an allocation for myself to try to um solve for that.
42:51
Well, people are going to be buying things.
42:56
So, you know, they're probably going to be buying things online.
42:58
So, you know, e-commerce consumption, that's a big category that will win whether rates are -5 or +5.
43:06
Um people need to care about health care, right?
43:08
So, they're going to consume things.
43:11
And there's probably going to be pressure over time to do, you know, better and better things uh and more useful things um just because um you know, we can't keep spending the way we are with the outcomes that we're getting, right?
43:25
Um okay, so that's that's the second category.
43:30
Um you know, we probably want to have um a reasonable way of equipping ourselves with skills and education.
43:39
Um so, that's another big category.
43:44
Um you know, we're probably going to need to have clean sustainable energy. That's another category.
43:49
We're probably going to want to eat in ways that are more constructively useful for us. That's another category.
43:53
We're probably going to want to hedge um just the chance that none of us knows what we're doing.
44:00
So, you know, you need some kind of like alternative asset category. That's another thing.
44:04
So, you can kind of go down the line, you know, whether you use Maslow's hierarchy or something else as a jumping off point, and kind of say, "Look, the the answers the high-level answer, the framework is obvious.
44:20
Healthcare, education, climate change, fintech, blah blah blah.
44:24
And then you need to fill in an allocation.
44:27
Then you need to figure out the mix of, you know, early stage versus late stage or public versus, you know, uh some of these other things.
44:34
And then you can construct an answer.
44:36
Um So, you know, the way that I answer this is to say, "Well, uh I'm basically going to be long growth because whether rates are minus five or plus five, the thing that overcomes all of that noise is fast growth.
44:54
And CEOs that can invest all the money they make today for the future.
44:58
Simply because I can now lazily let that person work on my behalf.
45:05
Because that's less of a problem that I have.
45:07
If you, as a CEO, Shane, if I was an investor in your company, and you said, "Chamath, I generate 30% free cash flow and I'm going to give you a dividend."
45:16
I would say, "Shane, [ __ ] you." I don't want that money.
45:21
Keep that [ __ ] supposed to do with it? Reinvest it. Grow faster, please.
45:25
I mean, one of the most incredible insights that that we figured out in 20 2014, I sold all Facebook all my shares.
45:35
And then you reinvested in Amazon, didn't you?
45:38
But the way we underwrote that investment, there's a guy that was working on our team who now runs a hedge fund.
45:42
Um young guy, brilliant guy who randomly emailed me, and I ended up hiring him.
45:47
Um emailing inbox uh at socialcapital. com.
45:51
This kid, Sakya Dawroo, great great guy. He's not a kid anymore.
45:55
He was a He was a kid then.
45:57
Uh and we worked on this analysis, and and basically, you know, he said to me, "Troy, I think that Bezos is a better capital allocator than Buffett."
46:07
And I was like, "What the hell are you talking about?"
46:09
And we constructed this really elegant chart which showed basically the P&L of Amazon, and it looked at every expense line.
46:19
And he had taken every single expense line, created a product around it, and made it a revenue line.
46:24
And I thought, "Man, this guy is a genius."
46:29
Um By the way, that deck is floating around, so you can see this chart uh out there uh in the wild.
46:36
Uh but that's capital allocation. That's really skillful. So, you want that.
46:38
You want You want a guy that's basically like, "Listen, guys, I got this.
46:44
We're going to generate a couple billion dollars.
46:45
I'm going to put all of it back in the ground for you.
46:47
And it's going to grow really well, and just trust me."
46:51
And I think that those are the real high-quality folks you want to get behind.
46:54
So, basically, my solution is you got to be long growth.
46:58
Um higher growth, the better, in the areas that matter for people.
47:00
Um and I think that, you know, 10 years from now, that'll be a playbook that really works.
47:07
By the way, that sounds kind of like he's not saying anything.
47:08
I think it is it's saying something because like, you know, the historical model of how you would get freedom is, you know, 60% equities, 40% bonds.
47:16
You know, the 60% you would say uh you know, you'd be long ETFs, maybe.
47:23
Okay, well, you know, long ETF is basically long Fang.
47:27
And I I think that you want a little bit more uncorrelated exposure than just Fang.
47:34
Um so, yeah, that's that's kind of like what I'm working through right now is trying to really refine an approach that I think can work for the next decade.
47:41
Uh you know, 15, 20 years, and then share it with people.
47:44
So, it sounds like part of your process is to go through this and figure out what's not changing and try to allocate there.
47:49
Do you also look at what you where you see massive change and how you could possibly take advantage of that, or is that a category you just don't evaluate?
48:00
Not in Not in that language.
48:00
Um I I I kind of tend to think about things that are just um like will they be more important?
48:06
Um and if they're going to be more important, how can we accelerate the right outcomes?
48:15
Um I think climate change is a really good example of that, where um it doesn't matter whether you believe in climate change or not.
48:21
Um I think that what we know to be true, we don't like.
48:27
Which is that, you know, the places we used to ski at, we can't ski at anymore.
48:32
The places we used to go and bathe on the beach may disappear not exist.
48:36
And so, if nothing else, just because of our own selfish desire to be happy, um we should probably want a better control, at least to the extent that we can, our impact on, you know, taking our own happiness away.
48:53
So, you know, I don't think people in the Midwest want, you know, hurricane season.
48:59
And if there are experiments that we can run, where we can observe whether they help, we should run them.
49:06
And so, you know, if you have, I don't know, all these gigatons of carbon being emitted, and you can run an experiment that takes them out, we should probably do it.
49:17
And we'll know conclusively whether uh you know, it it'll change hurricane season.
49:24
So, why not just run the experiment in an unemotional, detached way?
49:29
Um but like, you know, if you view climate change in that lens, it's a multi-decade, multi- dec- trillion-dollar opportunity.
49:38
The The world's first trillionaire will be somebody in climate change. Oh, that's interesting.
49:43
Well, as you were saying that, I was sort of also thinking there's things that we value today that are going to be massively under or overvalued in the future.
49:52
You know, commercial real estate strikes me as something that maybe maybe that's not going to have the same future as past.
50:00
What do you think of that and what are those industries for you?
50:05
Yeah, I'll say something that actually makes me a little sad, but I think it's true.
50:07
Um Uh I would not view it I don't view it as commercial real estate versus uh um resi um residential real estate.
50:18
Um I would say it this way.
50:22
I think that architecture will unfortunately have a lot less value in the future because of climate change.
50:33
Um Now, what does that mean?
50:37
Well, for example, if you look at some of the most progressive countries in the world, Europe, on the climate issue, and you look and, you know, again, start to go back to first principles.
50:49
Where is the carbon emitted?
50:51
You know, where are the greenhouse gases emitted?
50:54
Well, it's overwhelmingly in cities.
50:58
And then you start to look at, okay, well, you know, what are some of the things that we can do to electrify or to decarbonize?
51:03
And one thing that you get to is you have all this incredibly beautiful architecture, but it's completely dated.
51:13
And the amount of carbon that, you know, these heating systems, these water systems generate, you know, getting stuff into these very intricate, beautiful, you know, you you you walk by these piazzas, you think, "God, these are these things have been around for 500 years."
51:26
And on the one hand you're like, "It's amazing."
51:28
But on the other hand you're like, "This is going to be really tough for, you know, the city of Paris or Milan or Amsterdam to defend historic architecture in the face of also wanting to be carbon neutral."
51:42
Um and I think in the United States it's also going to have some direct implications as well.
51:46
So, if architecturally, you know, we unfortunately have to replace some of this old beautiful stuff with more simple modern stuff, you know, we'll have a more utilitarian landscape.
52:00
Um or maybe you'll just have a bunch of variations of modern.
52:06
Uh but you know, that's a direct implication of of climate change, I think, that nobody talks about.
52:09
So, you know, how will that affect people's happiness or people's creativity?
52:13
Uh that that they're all living in these sort of like I don't know if you've ever been to Shanghai, but if you cross from you know, Pudong to Shanghai, you go across this one mile bridge, it's it sort of looks like this kind of like weird future state where you just have these, you know, buildings rising up on every single, you know, to the horizon on each side.
52:32
They all look the same and you think, "God, that's depressing if I had to live in that."
52:39
Uh but we may have to live in that in a, you know, climate neutral world. Do you want that?
52:45
You said successful investing is about behavior and psychology. Can you expand on that?
52:51
I think that um when push comes to shove, um what you're always going to be fighting is yourself.
52:59
Um panicking, overreacting, underreacting, um you know, um refusing to observe the present, um living too much in the past, wanting too much to believe in the future.
53:14
So, it's all psychological traps.
53:19
Um because the data is there if you want to observe.
53:24
Um and then just clinically re-underwriting how it sits, you know, as as part of your risk equation.
53:30
You know, which bucket does it sit in?
53:31
And how big is that little bet inside the bucket?
53:34
Um and so I tried to really understand how to create an edge.
53:42
And I don't think an edge comes from, you know, attending conferences or, you know, writing some crazy algorithmic software.
53:48
Maybe a few people can do those things and find an edge, but what is a more kind of like mainstream accessible idea?
53:56
And I think it is that if you define certain behavioral principles that protect you from the worst parts of your own psychology, um that's a winning strategy.
54:10
Um and so, you know, I have like a handful of these rules that I try to live by.
54:16
Um and they these behavioral rules around, you know, trying to think about things like buying companies versus buying stocks, but trying to think about, you know, the quality of the CEO, the quality of the business, trying to think in long duration, not looking at the stock price every day.
54:30
Um you know, reading annual reports, avoiding quarterly reports, you know, all these things that try for me um to solve for my blind spots.
54:41
And um that's allowed me to take bigger and bigger swings because uh I feel like I'm practicing the things that um will, you know, protect uh uh me from myself.
54:57
Um So, I think a lot of what, you know, you need to do as a person is uh By the way, notice how all these things tie together.
55:07
It's like, you know, nobody would have ever told you that that focusing on your happiness would make you a great investor, but focusing on your happiness in part is saying, you know, you're exploring who you are as a person, you're finding what makes you happy, but the other part of that is you're finding out what blind spots are and your weaknesses, right?
55:22
And you're finding ways to um uh deal with them.
55:27
Um Well, when you translate that that knowledge of those things into business, particularly, you know, in investing, I think it's is helpful.
55:35
Um it's a money-making strategy.
55:38
Um, so I really I really think that spending time understanding yourself and then translating that into actionable guardrails that you write down and you stick to um, is a really important thing.
55:52
I I I love the idea of of sort of creating these correct automatic behaviors that put you on the path to success by either addressing your blind spots or sort of like showing you more.
56:03
Are there Are there sort of like personal rules that you have as well or there like let's let's go deep on that.
56:08
Like what do you do to overcome your blind spots in all areas of your life, not just investing, but personally, too? I talk.
56:19
Um, and um, again, I I go back to the same thing. I just I I just talk.
56:22
I And then when I feel when I find that I revert um, into a comfort zone where I'm repeating past behaviors that I don't like, it's because I've stopped talking to Nat, to a couple of friends that I rely on, to you know, two therapists that I talk to on a regular basis.
56:43
Um, it's all about my mental health.
56:43
Um, the healthier I am mentally, the more I'm able to overcome these natural inclinations to revert to comfortable patterns that have been very well established and well worn.
57:01
Um, they're not healthy, but they're just habits.
57:05
Um, so you know, by talking, what happens is people who know me, they develop a pattern recognition and then they start to tell me, "Hey, you're being really insecure there.
57:18
Hey, why are you, you know, talking in that way or talking about this thing?"
57:25
And now, what I can do, before I would get very defensive and insecure and I would attack the person when they would say that.
57:31
So, it it also needs people who really deeply at the end of the day love you and care care about you.
57:37
Um, and that's hard to find.
57:37
I mean, it's not like those those folks really grow on trees.
57:41
I have, you know, um, two people, not my friend Rob, and I really talk to them a lot.
57:51
Um, and then I have two therapists and I talk to them, um, weekly.
57:56
Um, and so that's really helpful for me.
57:58
Um, so, yeah, I it's just pattern.
58:00
It's just their pattern recognition.
58:02
Um, you know, talking is also really good cuz like it allows you to vent.
58:06
And so, you know, if you if you think about sort of like plaque, you know, flossing doesn't stop 100% of the plaque from building up, but it does prevent, you know, 90, 95%.
58:18
So, then when the dentist gets in there, you know, she's only or he's only cleaning out a little bit of muck and mire versus like all kinds of just random [ __ ] Um, and so for me, venting is like, uh, keeping, you know, the plaque from building up.
58:33
Um, it's stripping away the plaque.
58:36
It just allows me to get the negative energy out, to reframe some of the things that are happening in my life in a more constructive way.
58:41
And then I can come back to the problem at hand with a healthier mindset and outlook.
58:48
I just I I really think the big insight, the big unlock is it's not work and personal.
58:54
I don't think these are separate worlds.
58:56
They're deeply subconsciously intertwined and interconnected.
59:01
And being happy personally is the pathway to help everything else make sense.
59:09
Um, and that is around mental health.
59:12
And I think the key unlock for mental health is just finding a resource to talk to.
59:19
And when you first start talking, it's going to be just kind of blathery [ __ ] and, uh, it's going to be imprecise and it's going to be super awkward and you're going to feel like what is this?
59:32
Um and then over time, it's like anything like when you start to get good at it, um it's it's really good.
59:38
It's like it's like they're they're really they're really it's really good.
59:43
You need to exercise that muscle.
59:43
You mentioned pattern recognition.
59:45
I thought that was really interesting.
59:47
Like you've interviewed thousands of CEOs over the years.
59:50
What are some of the questions that you asked and the patterns that you recognize and how do you develop that pattern recognition to find the ones that are going to make the biggest difference?
1:00:00
Uh I've learned that my pattern recognition before was too brittle. It was too superficial.
1:00:05
I would ask dumb obvious questions for which any good CEO will have very good practiced answers.
1:00:13
And so now I don't do that anymore.
1:00:16
Um I'm trying to solve for something a little bit more elusive, which is two things, integrity and mental agility.
1:00:24
Um the integrity one can't be defined by a question.
1:00:27
It's about subtle observations over a long period of time because people take a long time to reveal themselves.
1:00:34
And going back to how we first started, um people are very good at lying and being evasive. Very good.
1:00:39
And I don't mean to say that in a negative way that you can't trust people. You absolutely can.
1:00:45
And I actually think the way to overcome all of this stuff is to actually put your trust out there and just trust uh with reasonable guardrails, but to trust and just to assume the best intentions of everybody.
1:00:56
I think that's a very healthy mindset.
1:00:57
It it just de-escalates a bunch of mental stress that you could otherwise have.
1:01:02
Um but people reveal themselves in small little ways over long periods of time.
1:01:07
And when you can observe enough of those observations, you can pull them together to get a really good sense of integrity.
1:01:15
And um so that, you know, for me is like a two, three, four, six month, nine month, one year journey.
1:01:24
Um and every moment is an opportunity to just re- underwrite my integrity and theirs.
1:01:33
You know, am I being completely whole and honest to them?
1:01:34
And am I giving them my best?
1:01:40
You know, so am I Am I leaning in with 100% of my integrity?
1:01:41
And then are they giving it back to me?
1:01:45
And it doesn't have to be in a business interaction.
1:01:47
It could be in a personal interaction.
1:01:48
It could be how they talk to the waiter at a restaurant, you know, uh random conversations you have and their reactions to things, their openness to different points of view. So, that's one thing.
1:02:00
And then mental agility is just more about um what happens when you keep things open-ended.
1:02:06
That's not what you would do if you were interviewing someone for a very specific role at a company, like, you know, engineer or something, you know?
1:02:15
There There it's about functional competence and these two things don't matter.
1:02:20
Um but when I'm evaluating a CEO, those are the only two things that matter and so it's about a bunch of open-ended conversations where you see how they think.
1:02:29
And, you know, when you see how they frame a problem.
1:02:31
And when you ask kind of seemingly dumb questions.
1:02:34
And if you're okay to ask what sounds like a dumb question.
1:02:38
And what they actually hear is a very open-ended question.
1:02:41
And that's a great way that sort of figure out uh mental agility because it sparks them in how their mind works and you hear an answer that you would get otherwise.
1:02:54
And what you hear is a framework and a process.
1:02:58
Um and uh and I really like that.
1:02:59
You know, like meaning like when you frame questions, like, "So, what do you think about" and you just say something like random.
1:03:08
You know, just like random.
1:03:08
You know, like, "Jim, what do you think about um you know, uh the triangle office?"
1:03:15
And you'd be like, what the hell kind of question is that?
1:03:20
Like that has nothing to do with what I know.
1:03:23
Um, and then, you know, you just find people's mental agility.
1:03:27
Um, and I I I honestly think CEOs are incredibly the best CEOs are incredibly mentally agile people.
1:03:31
They're kind of curious, they know, you know, a little bit about a lot.
1:03:34
You know, that's how you have to run a company, you have to know a little bit about a lot.
1:03:36
And uh, you have to be good at engaging and understanding things, asking questions back.
1:03:42
You know, well, what what about the triangle offense asks, you know, makes you want to ask me that question.
1:03:48
And then I would say, well, I don't know, I just think it's like, what do you think about sort of like, you know, structured approaches that, you know, um, have this sort of like dynamic allocation of like, you know, uh, of resources.
1:04:00
So, like, you know, the triangle offense to me is like this kind of like really cool way where you have like both have rigidity and flexibility.
1:04:06
And then, you know, then you may say, yeah, you know, well, here's a way that I think about my business that way.
1:04:10
And all of a sudden you're having a completely random conversation.
1:04:13
It required me to say something completely [ __ ] dumb and like what seems like a complete non sequitur to to the average person.
1:04:18
And then the intellectually mentally agile person, you know, you know, mostly out of kindness and curiosity engages you and then you end up down a totally different path.
1:04:30
That is a great way for me to gut check a CEO. I like that a lot.
1:04:35
I'm glad you didn't put me on the spot with the triangle offense thing.
1:04:39
I mean, I was just making it up randomly.
1:04:41
That that's the name of it. Yeah.
1:04:43
Talk to me uh, like public company CEOs.
1:04:45
Who who do you think is the the the sort of like top five public company CEOs?
1:04:50
Not asking for investment advice here, just who are the best pure CEOs for the next 10 years?
1:04:57
Ah, that's a good question. Okay.
1:04:59
Um, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos.
1:05:04
Also really, okay, you're really putting me on the spot. Um, I love it. I get you thinking.
1:05:10
I'm I'm really thinking to try to answer this in a super thoughtful way. Um Toby Toby Toby Lutke.
1:05:17
I I think Toby's really really exceptional. He um He's phenomenal.
1:05:22
He's world-class on the level of those two.
1:05:25
My gosh, it's such a good I wow, I've never been asked it so well. Jack Dorsey. Mhm. Exceptional.
1:05:33
Um and I uh I really owe him actually uh an apology because I had a very um dismissive sensation of Jack and I don't really know him that well, obviously.
1:05:44
Um but it's just that just in my observations of um sort of his decision-making particularly at Square um particularly around Cash App and uh you know, the decision to you know, the the idea of moving to Africa is just so smart, so genius.
1:06:05
I mean, just goes to show you the the short-term mindedness of these folks that that people would have reacted, I think.
1:06:10
Um but Dorsey Yeah, that's four, right? Yeah, that's four.
1:06:18
Elon, Bezos, Toby Jack Dorsey and Elon, Bezos, Toby, Jack. Um uh me. Which company?
1:06:30
Um I will eventually have something that represents the totality of my intellectual capital, meaning like You're going to go public?
1:06:40
I would I would I would really like to.
1:06:42
Um I would like to be under that pressure.
1:06:47
And um I would really like to work on behalf of everybody.
1:06:51
Uh everybody meaning like you know, if I can level the playing field and give folks But I don't know what that is.
1:06:57
See, that that's the problem.
1:06:57
Like I don't I don't know like how to answer that question.
1:07:00
Like it's like some amorphous blob.
1:07:01
Like what is it that I do?
1:07:04
I don't know what I I You you could go public tomorrow, though. Why don't you?
1:07:09
But I think I'm pretty good.
1:07:09
Like I really I really do think I'm good, and I think I'm getting better.
1:07:14
Oh, talk to me about that.
1:07:14
What what How do you measure the difference between good and like getting better for yourself?
1:07:22
We all like asymptote at some at some trajectory.
1:07:28
And I think that I am now one to one and a half orders of magnitude away from my asymptote.
1:07:37
So, you can kind of see it, but it's very faint.
1:07:44
And so, um now I think I have a toolkit to implement a process that can get me close to my asymptote.
1:07:54
And I would love for me to be able to talk to you in 40 years, I'll be 84, and say, "I'm like within you know, a couple of turns of the asymptote."
1:08:09
Um so, for me it's uh it's believing in myself more.
1:08:17
It's knowing how to take smarter risk, being risk on in larger quantum.
1:08:24
So, I can write, you know, hundred multi-hundred million-dollar checks now and feel okay about it.
1:08:33
Um I need to be able to do that with billions and tens of billions, and if this sounds crazy, but five or six people in the world really know how to do that well.
1:08:45
You know, um and so, it's not it's not a shot that a lot of people get a chance to take.
1:08:49
You know, even if you're running like, you know, the largest private equity fund in the world, the the quantums of money that people are investing uh that is that is of their own is still relatively limited and small.
1:09:02
Um even if the you know the headline numbers are big.
1:09:04
So, I want to learn to do that.
1:09:06
I want to learn to feel like less of an impostor.
1:09:08
The more I do that, I think the smarter I can get at distilling and observing the present, acting on that, and then passing that through to other people so that they can act on it, too.
1:09:20
Um And so, you know, I don't have the skill to go deep in one of these things and you know build one of these platforms.
1:09:27
I think my skill is slightly different, which is sort of to organize a lot of things together um in a thematic understanding.
1:09:37
Um and you know, this is where I think at like I I can't be a CEO of a million-dollar or hundred ten-million-dollar hundred or even billion-dollar company because that's about functional competence.
1:09:48
But when a company becomes ten-billion-dollar plus, it's all about capital allocation.
1:09:52
And I really think um just I'm an outlier in my ability to do that and my desire.
1:10:00
Sorry, I'm not an outlier in my ability to do it. That's not true.
1:10:04
I'm an outlier in my just maniacal desire to be really good at that.
1:10:08
So, I would want to bet on myself.
1:10:11
So, but that's not an accurate answer to your question because you said public company CEOs, and that's not So, I'm not public you were just going to break that you're going public right here on the show. No, no.
1:10:19
No, I have no plans, but uh Uh yeah, no, that whole whatever.
1:10:23
Okay, so, let's take me out of the question. That was stupid.
1:10:26
Uh Well, no, see that's me being feeling like an impostor.
1:10:31
Like see see what I mean?
1:10:31
Like it's like what a It's uh it's You're overthinking this.
1:10:37
Yeah, it's a coping mechanism.
1:10:39
What What What is your decision process for when you're making an a capital allocation decision?
1:10:43
I know you've made a few recently like without any specific names so I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but what's that process in your head like?
1:10:51
Like how are you actually What What's What are you talking to yourself about mentally to make sure cuz it it's all on you.
1:10:59
Yeah, I uh I I I really I really love it.
1:11:01
Like, you know, we do a lot of work like I I mean, I have great partners.
1:11:03
I have a team that I work with who are just exceptional people.
1:11:05
Um they are the most high-integrity people I've ever worked with.
1:11:12
Um and they give me enormous energy.
1:11:15
Um you know, I have I have uh uh some some you know, folks that I partnered up with um who have their own organizations as well.
1:11:23
Those folks are super high-integrity.
1:11:26
And so, all these people that I spend my day with every day are just kind, good, earnest people.
1:11:37
Each of us, I don't think are the smartest ones, but when we put ourselves together, we are really really smart collectively.
1:11:44
And that's that's awesome.
1:11:44
And so, we all do different things and everybody's bringing different things to the table.
1:11:51
And then what happens, it allows me to kind of synthesize all kinds of different inputs and learnings and you know, variations on a model, regulatory research, market research, you know, um consumer marketing research, all of this stuff and learn about it, which is super fun.
1:12:08
And in my mind, what's happening is basically like, here's how this can go right.
1:12:13
Here's how this can go wrong.
1:12:14
Here's how this can go right.
1:12:14
Here's how this can go wrong.
1:12:15
And I'm bouncing back and forth and all of these things are just um oscillating.
1:12:22
And if I had to characterize it, this this may sound nuts, but it's like a And then that oscillation goes faster and faster and faster and then I find a point of equilibrium.
1:12:32
Is that like the Matrix moment for you where like all of this data all of a sudden just sort of like Yeah. No.
1:12:39
Yeah, it it is like that.
1:12:39
It's like, you know, I I know that uh leading into something, I become a little detached.
1:12:48
I am a little all over the place. My mind's racing.
1:12:52
My you know, so sometimes I'll be saying non sequiturs on calls.
1:12:58
And uh my partners are very patient with me in those processes.
1:13:04
You've made like public calls. You did Bitcoin in 2012. You did Amazon in 2014. You did Tesla in 2015.
1:13:14
Like you've nailed fairly I would say controversial things at the moment I mean in hindsight they've all worked out exceptionally well, but at the moment they everybody thought you were crazy. Yeah. They really really did.
1:13:28
And and and that's awesome because it's like advantageous divergence, right?
1:13:31
You're diverging from the crowd and you're right.
1:13:36
Yeah, and and and what it does is it it has given me confidence in my process. It's random.
1:13:45
You know, it's about ingesting a lot of stuff.
1:13:47
It's allowing yourself to be influenced, but then come back home, right?
1:13:51
That's another thing I love.
1:13:52
Meaning if I'm having a conversation or we're in a sort of a teaching kind of a situation where I'm learning about something, I allow myself to be seduced.
1:14:00
I allow myself to sort of fall for the narrative.
1:14:04
I allow myself to believe the totality of what that other person believes fully and completely.
1:14:12
Because I want to really start to understand the nooks and crannies.
1:14:13
Now, that process doesn't work if you want to be intellectually lazy or if you find yourself being intellectually lazy and you stop when you get you know, confirmatory that first confirmatory meeting or that first confirmatory article or you know, you could joke but like that first confirmatory Google link. I'm done, you know?
1:14:36
It doesn't work that way.
1:14:36
But if you're willing to bounce around and you know, fundamentally be unoffensive in your opinions up front.
1:14:49
You find that people who have extreme opinions will talk to you in a very unguarded way.
1:14:53
And I I think I've I've trained myself to let myself be seduced by those folks so that I can learn from them.
1:14:59
Uh but I always come back home.
1:14:59
I come back to the center.
1:15:01
I come back to no opinion.
1:15:04
What what's the trick for that, right?
1:15:05
Like there's this quote from Ender's Game that I was thinking Have you ever watched that that movie or read the book where he says there's this moment where I understand my enemy better than they understand themselves and in that moment I sort of love them and defeat them.
1:15:16
And it sounds like you're allowing yourself to understand somebody else's opinion like so fully but you don't get caught up in it.
1:15:25
How do you avoid No, I do in the moment.
1:15:30
Um but I know to slow it down.
1:15:30
And then I also know to come back home.
1:15:33
So I think I think maybe the maybe the clarifying question Shane would be like, "What is your process of coming back home?" Okay.
1:15:40
So what I have to do is I have to go and then beings again, it takes it None of this is possible without an incredible team that has super high integrity, the anchoring principle of which is kindness.
1:15:54
So I will come back to my partners.
1:15:57
I'll be like, "Guys, what is that is that And they're like, "Okay. Mhm. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good."
1:16:07
Uh and they they de-escalate it, right?
1:16:11
So you know, or I'll go to Nat. She's like, "YEAH. LOOK. THAT. WHOA. HA. HUH." SHE'S LIKE, "OKAY. I GOT YOU. OKAY. OKAY. Got it."
1:16:19
You know, or or Rob or you know, like all these And so it's it's wonderful.
1:16:26
Um And so then I go, "Hm.
1:16:27
Okay, I was getting a little excited there."
1:16:29
Or I come back, "Can you believe this? I can't believe this.
1:16:32
What the WHAT THE THIS SUCKS. WHAT?" THEY'RE LIKE, "UH-HUH. OKAY. YEAH. Got you. Got you. Uh-huh. Good. Okay."
1:16:38
Uh and you know, I I've learned that I do that.
1:16:43
uh Uh, and so I can I get back on faster. Um, and it helps me. But but I do that a lot.
1:16:50
I allow myself to live in the persona of that person and that opinion because it allows me to understand um, where they're coming from.
1:17:00
That sounds like a superpower, man.
1:17:00
Like just to be able to understand at somebody's level without bringing any of yourself into it and just be like, I really want to see the world through your eyes.
1:17:08
I want to see everything.
1:17:08
I want to feel what you feel.
1:17:10
I want to see what's valuable, all the variables.
1:17:14
I want to see how they connect but the way that you see the world and then coming back and then say, now I can see the world through this person's eyes and my eyes.
1:17:22
I have fewer blind spots and I have a more Yeah.
1:17:25
More accurate view of reality, if you will. Yeah.
1:17:30
Are you still Are you still high on Bitcoin? Yeah. Really?
1:17:35
Yeah, I just think that um, you know, I think that we are dismantling financial orthodoxy.
1:17:47
And in that dismantling and in the leveling of the playing field, there will be moments of um, volatility.
1:17:57
And to have a small amount of insurance that's uncorrelated to the orthodoxy, I think it's just a smart risk management thing.
1:18:05
I don't I'm not super emotionally caught up in it, you know, it's not like I'm cheering on the failure of, you know, central banks and like I'm not decrying all the money getting printed.
1:18:14
I'm not that emotional about that stuff.
1:18:16
Um, uh, but I just think it's a smart thing to have under the mattress just in case.
1:18:24
How do you think about all this spending?
1:18:26
I mean, we're every Western country is about to basically, you know, spend themselves into I don't know what position, but they're going to spend more money in the next, you know, 10 to 15 years than they probably spent in the past 100.
1:18:40
And a lot of it on the surface, and I haven't looked into this as much as you have, but a lot of it on the surface seems like we're going to prop up the status quo instead of investing where things are going in the future, right?
1:18:51
So, uh I know some countries are writing checks to people to stay at home, but they're not requiring them to adapt to new skills that'll be valuable in the future.
1:19:00
They're sort of just propping up the way the world used to be.
1:19:02
How do you think about that?
1:19:06
Yeah, I I I think that um Or chin check me, like am I completely wrong?
1:19:11
Um I think in part it's not totally true what you're saying.
1:19:15
Um meaning like, you know, if you look at sort of the EU budget, um an enormous percentage of that budget is going to uh you know, a carbon neutral EU by, you know, 20 frankly, not even 2050.
1:19:27
They're trying to pull it forward and and do it 2040 in some industries, you know, 2030.
1:19:31
Um So, I think the spending is actually going uh in in reasonable places.
1:19:37
I think that there are there's always waste.
1:19:43
Um and the reason is that, you know, politics and political bodies don't know enough um to write specific legislation.
1:19:51
So, they get influenced by all kinds of folks, and so that's what creates waste.
1:19:56
And so, you have to be okay with that.
1:19:57
It's just a natural dynamic of democracies.
1:19:59
And, you know, the waste we we we deal with the waste because in return we get freedom.
1:20:04
You know, a different kind of freedom, right? Right?
1:20:07
Like I mean, like, you know, maybe you can have the most, you know, efficient thing in country in the world, but if it's autocratic, you may not want that.
1:20:14
You also don't want super efficient countries, right?
1:20:15
Like, you you we've learned this.
1:20:18
We we want resilient companies.
1:20:21
We want resilient countries.
1:20:24
We want resilient people.
1:20:24
And I think this this focus on hyper efficiency also had us, you you manufacturing PPE in certain locations and not having a national stockpile and it you know, we've done this in in a lot of ways where we've seeded this um redundancy or actually we're taught this in school.
1:20:44
Like business school teaches you, right?
1:20:46
Like redundancy is a waste and you can turn that waste into capital.
1:20:50
And so we become hyper efficient. I I agree with you. Just with a small tweak.
1:20:56
Business school as an example has taught you that redundancy is waste and waste can be converted into profit and profit is converted into compensation.
1:21:06
And I think that is what people have really drank the Kool-Aid on.
1:21:08
And so you know, when they ran out of waste that they could convert into profit um they had these ultra quote unquote efficient companies and then they just redirected um you know, the middle part of that equation to generate more compensation.
1:21:30
Which was like, you know, okay, well, we've eliminated all the waste, we've outsourced everything to China, we're generating more money than ever. Now what should we do?
1:21:36
And then people said, oh, we'll just start to buy back the stock and that'll also drive compensation.
1:21:40
Um so, you know, these things these things I think are cycles that that all flow from uh the incentives around comp, unfortunately.
1:21:50
Um so, that that just I just wanted to comment Yeah, I know.
1:21:53
I thought that was that was excellent.
1:21:54
Do you think government should bail out public companies? Industries? Which ones?
1:22:04
I think that the government should really be plowing money into the next generation of industries.
1:22:12
And I think that um the government should always be on the bleeding edge of not needing to make money.
1:22:20
In in some critical important industries for the future. Mhm.
1:22:23
And so, in the absence of doing that, we've lost touch with the things that have really propelled the United States forward.
1:22:28
For example, you know, why was the space race so important?
1:22:30
Um you know, on the one hand, it was about, you know, American determinism, right?
1:22:34
Like we are going to do this. This is going to happen.
1:22:39
Um but it was also that it created an entire generation of industries that were derivative from the space industry because you were training people with a level of skill and precision and capability that they could then apply to other markets.
1:22:52
So, we always need to be in space, you know?
1:22:54
We always need to be pushing the boundaries, you know?
1:22:56
We need to go, you know, not just to the moon, but now to Mars and beyond.
1:22:59
Um it can't just be Elon's task.
1:23:02
That's not fair, you know?
1:23:05
You put him against the wall and he's got to raise an enormous amount of capital that, you know, if if we had government sponsorship for uh we could have we could have done a lot more sooner.
1:23:15
In many ways, you know, that this deflationary super cycle really started in 1970 when we basically ended the space program in its in in in the early version of South Africa in the So, I think that, you know, that's a a really big thing.
1:23:30
Um that's where that's where I think like, you know, government should be spending their money.
1:23:33
Um they should be making bold bets uh uh on other markets, too, like, you know, uh climate change or they should be changing incentives around, you know, health care.
1:23:44
They should be changing incentives around education, you know?
1:23:47
If you were going to spend money, you know, why don't you just wipe out all the student debt?
1:23:49
I don't think that's such a bad thing and in return make people, you know, um you know, join some sort of like American Peace Corps that kind of like does work and volunteers and you know, there's all kinds of ways that that that governments can allocate capital probably a little bit more productive. I like that.
1:24:07
I'm going to switch gears and start asking some of these Twitter questions.
1:24:11
So, you can you can answer them rapid fire if you want.
1:24:12
Of all the provocative and controversial things that you've said, which ones do you regret? None.
1:24:19
What do you think future Chamath will disagree with?
1:24:24
That you agree with today.
1:24:26
Anything come to mind that you're sort of on the edge of it?
1:24:30
No, but if I'm if I'm evolving, I will have learned so much more that my thoughts today will seem slightly immature and naive.
1:24:39
What's the last thing you changed your mind about?
1:24:42
Oh my gosh, I had three or four things just today.
1:24:47
What do you think of the entire venture capital industry?
1:24:51
Um well-intentioned, somewhat misguided, somewhat low integrity in certain places, misaligned.
1:25:02
Is this work-from-home thing real and what are some of the implications?
1:25:06
It's partially real and I think the biggest implication is um belongingness, um community, feeling part of a um a group, um and so I think when we can go back to the office, we'll want to.
1:25:24
I think one thing that we miss on this um is that we like to feel part of something larger than ourselves and that's become harder not only in our communities in some ways.
1:25:32
I mean, in some ways it's easier cuz we're all going through this common struggle, but we're also uh it's harder in our community and we don't feel like even though you're working for a company or you're working with people, it doesn't feel as much and I've noticed a lot of people have started saying, "Well, it's becoming really transactional now."
1:25:47
I don't see people at the office and ask about their weekend anymore.
1:25:52
It's becoming very sort of I think that's really interesting sort of observation.
1:25:59
I think that's well said.
1:25:59
I think that's a really important thing.
1:26:00
I I completely agree with you. How do you manage risk?
1:26:05
Uh I mean, I have a I have a framework.
1:26:07
Uh it's basically a barbell.
1:26:09
Um you know, a big chunk of the liquid bets, a big chunk of very concentrated liquid bets and then a slug in the middle that's just more kind of like random.
1:26:19
Cash or the S&P 500 for the next 5 years? S&P 500.
1:26:25
Uh you had something about why men live uh less long.
1:26:28
Do you remember that on Twitter?
1:26:32
Yeah, I I tweeted something out. What was that?
1:26:34
Um Didn't it have something to do with like we couldn't talk about our emotions or something? Yeah. No, no, no.
1:26:41
It It has to do with mental health and emotion.
1:26:42
I I I I really do believe that.
1:26:44
I mean, I think that you know, like like well, let me just ask the question like why do women live longer than men?
1:26:52
Why do women live longer than men? Why? No, no. Why? I mean, why? Why? I don't know.
1:26:56
I I I think that there's something to the fact that they're able to talk about feelings in a way that is unnatural for men. 100%.
1:27:05
I really think people think this is like a crock of horse [ __ ] I don't, but I think that um your physiology is not just how your lower intestine processes blah blah blah.
1:27:17
Like that's not what it means.
1:27:21
Like the the body is like a very complicated combination of emotions and, you know, cells and organs and all of these biological, psychological functions interacting.
1:27:36
Um and we've all seen that play out.
1:27:39
Um and so, you know, it's like it's inconceivable that your mental health doesn't improve your health. I mean, right?
1:27:46
Like you you sound like an idiot if you said that.
1:27:51
And I just think that dudes don't talk and it's a little bit stigmatized than it is for women.
1:27:56
And I think that that's a wonderful superpower that women can teach the rest of us.
1:28:04
My I mean, like I said, my partner's taught me how to talk.
1:28:07
And I will be eternally grateful for her for having taught me that.
1:28:11
Next question, what are some of the lessons you learned from the book The Adult Children of Alcoholics which you recommended a few times?
1:28:18
The most important one is how I was normal.
1:28:24
And it's again it's pretty obvious or not obvious but may sound bland but like you know to feel so deeply insecure and somewhat of an impostor my whole life and always the outsider you know um that's the first book that said hey there's an entire group of people that will behave this way based on these inputs and I was like wait a minute I behave those ways.
1:28:49
Wait you're telling me that I'm not this deficient broken person that I'm a byproduct of this and this is well studied and it's like it's actually normal and you can improve where you are.
1:29:04
Uh was it was a profound moment.
1:29:09
All right last question, what's the most mis- mis-valued asset in the world today? Either high or low.
1:29:16
Oh wow this is really good question. Okay.
1:29:18
Um You can pick most undervalued or most overvalued. Oh my gosh wow.
1:29:25
Uh See I I really take these questions seriously like when you ask me that I want to No but I want to give you like a right answer and I don't really know.
1:29:32
I had I You can just say I don't know.
1:29:36
I mean Yeah I don't know. Okay. I don't know.
1:29:39
I don't know how to answer that question to be honest with you.
1:29:42
It's a really good question.
1:29:43
I I love the the video thing we just started doing this but I can see the wheels turning in your head. I love it.
1:29:48
This has been an amazing conversation Chamath.
1:29:50
I want to thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks Ben.
1:29:52
I really I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.