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All right, everybody. Welcome back.
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It is our fourth annual Bestie Awards.
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Yes, everybody is incredibly excited to hear the biggest winners in politics and losers in business, best science breakthroughs, so many amazing categories.
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With me again, Chairman Dictator Chamath Palihapitiya, our billionaire POC.
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Welcome back to the program, Chamath. Bye, POC. Bye, POC.
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That's what I said, billionaire POC.
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Billionaire person of color.
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Yes, please get it right.
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And running the all-in DEI group, the Rain Man himself, David Sacks.
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Welcome back to the program. Good to be here.
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Okay, and the Sultan of Science.
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Welcome back to the program.
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Are you ready with your selections, gentlemen? Are we ready to do this? J.
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Cal, this is the holiday episode.
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You got to have a little more cheer.
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This isn't all business, dude. Cue the music, Nick.
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3 2 Yes, and here we are, everybody, back again for the 2023 Bestie Awards.
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This is where everybody goes crazy.
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Oh my god, standing ovation.
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Hold on, who's drinking some champagne with me?
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I need some champagne popping.
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What are you guys drinking? These are the awards.
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Everybody wants to know who's going to be a winner.
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You're right, I need a drink. Hold on.
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He needs a drink for this? I need a drink, too.
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Can you Can I go get a drink? Hang on.
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Everybody get a drink, loosen it up. I'm at my office.
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I don't have alcohol here.
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Look in the second drawer. Let your winners ride. Rain Man David Sacks.
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And as I said, we open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. All right, everybody.
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Welcome to the Bestie Awards for 2023. What are you drinking?
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I got a little Veuve Clicquot.
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You know, I love my Veuve. going to drink it?
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You know, I People don't know this about me, but that was um my beverage of choice was the old Veuve Clicquot when I would go out in New York.
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What have you got there, Sacks?
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What are you drinking for the 2023 Bestie Awards? What are you drinking?
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I'm drinking my Clase Azul Reposado and uh a glass with a single big rock and I broke out my uh patriotic Great Seal of the United States glass.
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This is a tribute to the border.
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You got a little bit of Mexico, a little bit of the United States, and is it flowing between the border and you? Is that it? It's open border now.
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Open border for Christmas. open at this point. Got you. Okay. It just flooded again. Yeah.
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Chamath, you're not drinking. You're at the office.
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Freeberg I mean, I didn't I didn't plan.
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I brought my props to wish everybody happy holidays. Oh, nice. It's beautiful.
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And this festive sweater. Amazing.
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Freeberg, everybody knows that you're a a quiet solo drinker in your darkest hours. What are you drinking?
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There's no surprises there. What are you drinking?
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I'm always drinking what I got to hang out with you, J Cal.
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I'm drinking a Victoria beer. A Victoria beer. actually.
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I don't think you would hang out with J Cal sober, do you?
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Oh, everybody, there it is. Woo. I cannot.
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We've got the Veuve Clicquot.
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Unfortunately, at my ski house, I can't find the flute, so I'm going to put this in a wine glass. Sorry for the sacrilege.
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But cheers, here's to another amazing year of the All-In podcast and the besties hanging out. Cheers.
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You want to say a few words, J Cal?
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Yeah, I'd like to say a few words. memoriam of the year?
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Yes, working with you guys has been delightful, miserable, and everything in between.
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Congratulations on all of our success and uh here's to an amazing 2024.
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And hopefully we find a CEO and we can keep this thing going for another 150 or so episodes.
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Nobody thought we would get here.
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Everybody hates us for our success.
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And the mids and the haters. Love you, besties. Cheers.
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Well, I I would like to make a toast. Here we go.
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Here is to three of the most talented warm friendly guys and J Cal.
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Yeah, I knew he was coming.
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I wouldn't let you joke for a minute from me. I touched you that one.
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I touched you in this direction.
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Don't ever forget it, brother. All right.
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Well, to three of the most sincere, heartfelt, intelligent, loving individuals, and David Sacks, welcome to the program.
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I've got a big huge lineup here for you.
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And let's just get to it.
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We're going to give our 2023 award for the biggest winner in politics last year.
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Chamath, you said that your prediction for 2023, now we're going to give the actual award for 2023, but in our predictions episode last year, you said you were long Nikki Haley and short DeSantis. What a prescient call.
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What do you have this year?
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That's spread trade paid off in spades. Yeah. Big spread trade.
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Looking back, I think the biggest political winner was Donald Trump. Okay.
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I think that the documents case galvanized his leadership in the Republican nomination, and I think that this move by the Colorado Supreme Court basically sealed the deal.
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I think he is going to run away with the Republican nomination, and barring some catastrophic meltdown, has a better chance to get into the White House than before this Colorado case.
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So, he was the biggest political winner, I think, of 2023.
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It just seems to me that if I had to really put it in a nutshell, I think that the the Dems, in this weird way, actually want Trump back in office more than the Republicans do, because everything they've done has been nearsighted, and I think has actually galvanized his support, and increased his popularity and his ability to fundraise more than anything else.
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Friedberg, who is your biggest political winner of 20 23?
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Who did I give it to you last year? Do you do you remember?
5:48
You gave it to MBS and Saudi that they would have the your prediction was they would have the most important year in the modern era.
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Well, but in some ways I think they are center stage That's what I thought and yeah, so I am giving my biggest winner.
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I'm giving my biggest political winner award to the nation state of Saudi Arabia. Oh, why?
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Like they are sitting in the middle of the US China, Iran Israel, Russia.
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They have relations with all of those nations and relations where they are trying to be productive. Mhm.
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Extraordinary leverage with both their capital, their geographic positioning and their energy resourcing and painting a very positive future on how they want to reinvest their capital and modernize the country and I think one of the biggest coups that they pulled this year was turning J Cal to being a big promoter of Saudi after his visit to the Middle East.
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And so I think they're entering 2024 with great strength and leverage.
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So I give them credit for riding out many storms this year and coming out ahead.
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So it's just it's been interesting to watch.
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I'm not I'm not close or tied to them in any way, but I just think from a global leverage point of view they seem to be in a very strong place. So that's my my award.
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I can't disagree with you that the place has made incredible progress.
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Personal freedoms, economic freedoms, they're the country is evolving and embracing every country on the planet, right?
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So you you have to take that as a win.
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I have no business interest there, but I I am impressed with the progress.
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So sacks that means it's your turn to give your short 2023 biggest winner.
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My biggest winner in politics, J Cal, I think you'll like this one, is abortion rights. Abortion rights? Huh. I have abortion rights.
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After Dobbs, abortion rights are winning on every battle where they're at issue. Mhm.
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It's won referenda in very red states like Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio.
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It's swung legislatures to the Dems in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
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It's swung state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
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I'd go so far as to say it's the Democrats' only winning issue, and they are putting it on the ballot everywhere they can.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out around 30 years ago that we likely could have reached this resolution decades ago if the courts hadn't stolen the issue from the political process because abortion rights were in the process of being liberalized everywhere.
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And in my view, the political process is messy, but it's how we finally move past the issue as a nation, which is why I think Dobbs was the right decision, even if it was a difficult one. Huh, interesting.
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So, you are smoothing over Trump's taking away the right for women to choose and saying that this is a net positive for the country, if I'm reading it correctly.
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Well, Trump didn't take anything away.
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The Supreme Court The Supreme Court didn't take anything away.
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The Supreme Court Hold on. I I just explained it. You're not listening.
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The Supreme Court gave the issue back to the democratic process.
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The democratic process is now voting to maintain abortion rights, and that is going to settle the issue once and for all.
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So, all of your fears that abortion rights would fall by the wayside because that's Supreme Court decision have actually proven to be null and void.
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What we're ending up with is a better solution where the country doesn't need to fight about this anymore because the voters have expressed the will of the people. Fantastic framing.
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Great save for the Republican Party there.
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Well, it won't be unless they learn how to talk about the issue.
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Yeah, I mean, the way I would frame the same issue is that Trump stacked the deck to take away women's right to choose in order to get elected, but your framing is pretty good, too.
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And you're a master of framing these things.
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So, I was torn here for mine.
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I had two different choices.
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I was either going to go with Nikki Haley because what an amazing feat for her to to even be getting close to Trump in some of these primaries.
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But I think really the biggest winners in this year of 2023 were non-traditional candidates actually becoming somewhat viable and capturing the imagination of young people.
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Vivek, RFK, and Dean Phillips being I think the three leading candidates.
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So, I'm going to go with the non-traditional candidates being the big winners for 2023.
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And for last year I had said that my prediction was my for 2023 was that Trump would get indicted, win the nomination, and then agree to not run because he gets a pardon.
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So, I think I've got two or three of those uh in the parlay in the bank.
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Let's go on to biggest loser.
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The biggest loser in politics.
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When we did our predictions for 2023, Chamath, you said that you were short DeSantis.
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Here we are, we're giving our actual award for the biggest political loser in 2023.
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Freeberg, I'll start with you.
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Who was your biggest political loser for 2023?
10:42
My biggest political loser is the DEI movement.
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political loser is the DEI movement. Uh I heard obviously post October 7th, the Hamas attacks on Israel, and then the following support for Hamas that came out of what have historically been groups that are aligned with DEI interests, and then the DEI driven leaders of the universities that went in front of Congress to defend
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their freedom of speech rules around anti-Semitic protests caused a lot of folks that I know who are very liberal and very influential to wake up to the negative impacts of uh the DEI movement and its linkage to potentially anti-Semitism, which is masked in this oppressor oppressed ideology, that is the basis of a lot of these DEI protocols. And so, I think it really
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And so, I think it really shined a a negative light on DEI this year in a way that hasn't been the case in a broader way with very influential people in a very long time.
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And so, I think that that movement is going to take a big hit and uh took a big hit the end of this year and will uh continue to, I think, be questioned by donors and supporters of the ideologies of that movement. Okay.
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Sacks, who is your biggest loser in politics for 2023?
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My biggest loser in politics for this year is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.
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And you can see this pretty clearly by just looking at the cover of Time magazine.
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He began the year fresh off of winning Time magazine's Person of the Year, and by the end of the year, the same author at Time magazine was writing a new cover story saying that Zelenskyy had become delusional, he had become messianic, he was ordering his troops on suicide missions, and his own inner circle had turned on him.
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And of course, who could forget that other photo from the middle of the year at Vilnius, when all those Euro snobs turned their back on Zelenskyy.
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That was a brutal image that went viral on social media, literally the European elite turning their backs on a frustrated Zelenskyy.
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Sadly, Zelenskyy had the opportunity in April of 2022 to make peace, to sign a peace deal, and unfortunately, he took Boris Johnson and and Joe Biden's advice to pressure Putin rather than make peace, and I think that gamble has turned into a disaster for him.
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Chamath, your biggest political loser in 2023?
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I had a different choice, but I think Mhm. Game time change?
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Yeah, hearing David has convinced me.
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I will I will go with the death of the acronyms.
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It was it was close for me between that and I actually think that Joe Biden unfortunately had a very difficult run of it in 2023 when you actually think about it.
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The Ukraine thing was a fiasco.
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All of this stuff around maybe putting the hand on the scale, whether it's on Elon or against Donald Trump.
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It's all just very messy, I think for him.
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But I do think that Friedberg is right.
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This is probably the beginning of the end of the acronyms and if you look at ESG and DEI together, ESG's a little bit more measurable, but sustainable asset ownership and ESG ownership across the world shrank by 15%, which you may say is that a big number or not?
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That's $5 and so where the money goes typically, so goes everything else in modern society.
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And so when the money starts to scurry, I think that you can pretty much expect that people's patience and support of these kinds of movements are waning.
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I'll go with death of the acronyms are the biggest political losers.
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So you started, you were going to say Biden, but you changed it in real time and you went DEI ESG acronyms. Acronyms, yeah.
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Okay, death of the acronyms.
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You know, I had a lot of talks with folks about this one.
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People had a lot of input.
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Some people said DeSantis, some people said Biden.
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I think the biggest 2023 loser in politics is the American people who are now faced with a Biden-Trump rematch.
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Both of those individuals clearly being in different stages of decline, being over 80.
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And the GOP just can't quit Trump and it seems like the Democrats can't quit Biden despite 70-80% of the country not wanting the rematch.
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So I'm going to give the American people are the biggest political losers of 2023. All right, here we go.
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Biggest political surprise.
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This is the biggest political surprise of 2023.
15:20
Sachs, what's your biggest political surprise?
15:22
Well, I think the biggest political surprise, and it was a very negative one, was the Hamas attack on Israel on the morning of October 7th, which really seemed to come out of nowhere.
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Only 8 days before, Jake Sullivan, who's Biden's National Security Advisor, had declared that the Middle East had been quieter than it had been in two decades.
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And those words obviously proved proved very ill-timed, but he wasn't alone in thinking that.
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I think almost everybody was really surprised by this attack.
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I think until then, the Middle East seemed to be on a path of progress with the Abraham Accords being negotiated between Israel and several Gulf monarchies.
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And I think that October 7th has really changed the political paradigm, certainly in Israel, in the Middle East, and I think even in American politics. Mhm. Okay.
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Freeberg's a little bit of a nuanced take on that, but I said the rise of Hamas was the biggest political surprise.
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You know, Hamas is a self-proclaimed political party that was thrust to the center of geopolitics and domestic social issues across the West after October 7th, which was I think probably a surprise to many that planned these attacks as well.
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Basically, it feels to me like Hamas is the pawn that crossed the chessboard and became a queen.
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It's an organization that, you know, had resourcing and was influenced by, you know, many have shown connections to Iran and and other wealthy states.
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And had very low attention levels prior to October 7th on a global basis, and post-October 7th now has recognition and sympathy and a great deal of interest in the the root cause of their party.
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So, really incredible surprise.
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I don't think anyone could have predicted this at the start of the year, that not just the attacks happened, but the resulting shift in the discourse and influence that's happened.
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Chamath, biggest political surprise of 2023.
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I'm going to go with a domestic choice and I think it's quite obvious.
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But the biggest political surprises are of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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I don't think anybody would have predicted that he would both drop out of the Democratic Party, run as an independent, and essentially collect He is in terms of favorability in the polls, he's the leading 2024 candidate right now. It's incredible. People like him. That's for sure. Incredible.
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And nobody would have predicted it.
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That's a really good one.
17:50
What do we think he will get if he runs as an independent, just percentage-wise?
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Ross Perot as a third-party candidate got 19%.
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You think better than 19%?
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Because the the country is much more fragmented today.
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There's a lot more protest votes today.
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There's just a lot of reasons where RFK can garner a lot of support and build a plurality among centrists.
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That wasn't possible when Perot was running because when he ran you have to you have to remember like this the country was in a very different place psychologically than it is right now.
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Yeah, I too had third-party candidates as being my biggest surprise.
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I didn't give it to a specific one.
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I was debating these third-party candidates against the GOP not being able to field a better option than Trump.
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But I think I'm going to go again with third-party candidates.
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But I'll include Dean Phillips in that breaking ranks.
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I'll include Vivek just a very young, very smart individual capturing people's imagination.
18:44
Third-party candidates for me is the biggest surprise and and I do think it could have a meaningful impact.
18:48
If you're right that he gets over 19%, who does that Chamath, in your mind, who does that benefit and who does it hurt if the candidates are Biden and Trump? It hurts Biden the most. You believe that? Okay. What about you, Sax?
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Who do you think it hurts the most? Unclear right now.
19:05
I mean I think on the issues I can see a lot of populist voters wanting to go with RFK.
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But on the other hand, maybe he does peel away some Democratic Party voters.
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So, I'm not sure, to be honest.
19:18
Yeah, I've heard this before.
19:18
Any any thoughts Freeberg on that? What's the question?
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If RFK were to get, as Chamath thinks, more than Perot, so that's 20% or more of the popular vote, who is that going to harm and who's it going to hurt? Trump or Biden?
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I saw a Gallup survey that showed that there's a real shot at more than 40% of Americans being interested in the third party.
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And so, I I'm I'm I'm sorry, I could be totally wrong on that, but I'm pretty sure I saw that and it really kind of resonated with me.
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And I think our discourse here and, you know, obviously conversations with our friend group, Nick might have something on this.
19:54
Support for third US political party up to 63%. This is the Gallup data. Yeah, so I was right.
19:59
I think that this is one of the most kind of profound shift in American politics, at least in our lifetimes, that the right has gone very right, the left has gone very left, and they've been so rooted in identity politics that you can't really see any of these issues kind of finding compromise and finding a way to lean across the aisle and get things done.
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And I think that's where a lot of people are just fed up.
20:22
So, I would love to see a third political party emerge and if RFK breaks the dam on this, it would be fantastic.
20:28
It will take, as these things always do, a number of years for a group of independents to coalesce around what that third party looks like and how it's going to be governed and so on.
20:38
But this could be a really interesting shift in the dynamics of American politics. So, pretty pretty cool.
20:44
I'm not into politics in the US that much, but pretty cool I think opportunity to reframe, you know, how do we want to build America going forward and thinking about using a new party as a way to do that.
20:56
And we haven't even heard of No Labels, the third party platform.
20:59
They're probably going to announce Joe Manchin any day now.
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And so, that could change things as well.
21:05
So, that's a very interesting take.
21:07
problem that we have, this may sound really dumb, but I think it's true in launching a third party, is a viable name. Mhm. Mhm.
21:19
I think it's the most important boundary condition to have a sustainable third party is a is a good name. Like an iconic person. The chairman's party.
21:29
Like whatever we call this party.
21:31
of the party, not the person they feel yeah.
21:32
labels is a terrible name. That's a terrible name.
21:34
Actually The chairman's party is perfect. terrible. Green party's terrible.
21:37
The Patriot party, Freedom party, they're all terrible because they all feel like they're rooted in some, you know, either conservative or liberal cause.
21:45
There There's got to be some element of like what's the right decision on each on each topic, not necessarily, you know, how do we fight the identity politics.
21:54
I think that's the key piece that's missing and I like the rational party.
21:58
Like a party of rational individuals. to a degree, you know. Yeah.
22:01
Branding Branding says What would you What would you call it? The third party? Republicans.
22:08
People's Republic of I don't know. Saxistan?
22:11
Chamath, do you have an idea for a name?
22:15
I'm not going to comment on this for sure in FRONT OF YOU. CHAMATHLY BOO. Something brewing. J. K.
22:22
Would you Would you have a name for a third party?
22:23
You like the rational party?
22:25
the rational party or something like that where it kind of evoked you know, people who were being thoughtful and were trying to make rational decisions in everybody's best interest, right?
22:37
Something that was not about us versus them, abortion, or you know, DEI or ESG, just something focused more on getting things done.
22:44
The The The Getting Things Done party. Something like that.
22:49
Getting Things Done party.
22:50
So, a bit on the nose, but better than the Derangement party. Yeah, absolutely.
22:54
All right, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Here we go. Oh, man.
22:58
Is that you trying to derail the show?
23:01
I will not engage with that.
23:02
All right, it's time for our biggest business winner.
23:04
Biggest winner in business. Who you got, Chamath?
23:07
Who's your biggest winner in business?
23:11
I mean, I don't think this is even close.
23:14
But, I think it's Elon Musk. Oh, huh?
23:18
Three things, obviously, three different companies, but the rebasing of Twitter actually had an even more profound impact, I think, on Silicon Valley than it necessarily did on Twitter.
23:31
Second was, I think, SpaceX has really turned a corner.
23:33
Starlink is really at scale.
23:35
Starship looks like it's viable.
23:39
And then the third is Tesla really consolidated its leadership in EVs and batteries and battery technology and FSD.
23:47
So, I think on the merits, it was not even close.
23:54
Okay, Sachs, who you got?
23:54
Who's your biggest business winner? The Magnificent Seven.
23:59
The are the seven companies that accounted for almost all of the stock market gains this year.
24:03
You can see it in this chart.
24:04
It's about a 63% gap between the performance of the top names, top seven names in the S&P 500, and then the other 493 of them.
24:17
I think that the S&P 493 had a 12% gain this year, which isn't bad, but it was dwarfed by the Magnificent Seven, which was almost 80%. Hm, incredible.
24:29
All right, Sachs says the M7. Freeberg, who you got?
24:31
Yeah, I'm going to pick one of the seven, which is Microsoft.
24:33
Just a shot down the the middle of the fairway here.
24:38
Despite only seeing, I think, roughly 8% top-line growth, the business saw its market cap grow by over a trillion dollars, 1. 7 to 2. 7 trillion this year.
24:47
Just an incredible number.
24:47
I mean, can you imagine if we ever said that 10 years ago, whether anyone would believe it?
24:51
Consumer and enterprise strength and strategic strength, the the that they were able to close the Activision acquisition in this sort of regulatory environment.
25:01
And then the strength that Satya showed and the the speed at which he acted during the OpenAI weekend debacle, where he set up this whole thing where he got Sam on board and was going to retain all this value that he was extracting from
25:12
OpenAI in partnership, was I I think great leadership and cemented his his position and standing as being a really thoughtful, fast-acting, strategic leader for a business that's been around forever, but amazingly added a trillion of market cap in 12 months. So, I I just throw it to
25:27
So, I I just throw it to to Microsoft this year.
25:29
It's very hard to kind of break that business apart and say, "Here's all the things that are wrong with it."
25:33
It's just, you know, it's just moving.
25:36
All right, very well done.
25:36
We've got Elon Musk and worked then you worked there for a while? One year. At At Twitter? Or No, at Microsoft. Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft. One year.
25:45
Did you work there for a while?
25:47
No, I was locked up for 2 years in the Yammer deal.
25:48
Yeah, I was a corporate vice president at Microsoft. Did you like it?
25:53
Yeah, it was I mean, it's a high-quality company, for sure.
25:55
I mean, I was like super active for 1 year because I was still in charge of I still had a P&L running Yammer, but then after 1 year, Yammer was sort of assimilated into the Borg, and I didn't have anything to do.
26:08
I was kind of just like on call. Right, right.
26:10
All right, I am going to talk my own book on this one and give it to Dara and the team at Uber.
26:14
They got into the S&P 500, became profitable, planning stock buybacks.
26:19
They resolved almost all of the regulatory res- issues, including getting the taxis in London to be on the app, which was their big adversary, and they were going to get kicked out of London, if you remember.
26:33
It's a company that 5 years ago the press and the fake news were saying could never be profitable and was going to fail, and now it is the most successful new startup in the last cycle, bigger than everybody.
26:48
And so, congratulations to the team over there.
26:50
All right, biggest loser in business.
26:54
The biggest loser, it's 2023.
26:57
Freeberg, just so you know, last year your prediction was capital-intensive series B, C's, and D's of growth companies.
27:03
Well done on that prediction.
27:05
But give me, Freeberg, your actual.
27:05
Who was your biggest loser in 2023? Oh, Sultan of Science. It's sort of tied up.
27:13
Obviously, there's a tail to the effect, but it's VCs who deployed most of their capital in 2021.
27:17
Obviously, it was the year where of venture capital deployments peaked.
27:23
And what I've heard from institutional PEs this year is that, you know, not only will that vintage underperform, but it could torpedo as many as 50% of firms that are managing capital today in Silicon Valley, and it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to venture as an asset class significantly because of the torpedo that the 2021 vintage represents in performance.
27:49
So, that was my biggest loser for the year.
27:53
Good for me and Sachs because we were diligent during that time.
27:54
All right, let's go to you, Sachs.
27:58
Who's your biggest loser in business in 2023?
28:01
My biggest business loser is Disney.
28:01
It seems that every aspect of Disney's business did bad in 2023.
28:11
I mean, all their major theatrical releases flopped.
28:12
They missed a conservative backlash against its woke social stances.
28:16
You may recall that the actress who played Snow White in the remake accused Prince Charming of being a stalker.
28:25
I mean, there's a million examples.
28:25
Even their their Marvel franchise suddenly had bombs.
28:28
They had to fire Jonathan Majors who was doing a fantastic job playing Kang in an entire franchise arc.
28:36
They're going to have to reset now because of a criminal conviction involving him.
28:40
Disney Plus subscriptions fell off a cliff.
28:42
Even attendance at its theme parks declined dramatically because they charged way too much for families to visit.
28:47
And then finally, Bob Iger picked a fight with Elon Musk over advertising.
28:52
Remember Elon publicly told Iger to GFY. Good for you. And yep.
28:57
And tens of thousands of Disney Plus subscribers canceled their subscriptions because of that.
29:01
And it all makes you wonder if Iger now wishes he had stayed retired. I, too, picked Disney.
29:08
I put Disney and Warner Brothers.
29:11
Uh both of them had their comic book franchises collapse simultaneously.
29:16
On the on the Warner Brothers side and the DC side, the Flash and Justice League, everything came apart.
29:20
Streaming was too expensive.
29:22
And you didn't mention these uh horrific strikes that they had to deal with.
29:26
And it feels like they had to give a ton of concessions.
29:29
So, Disney was my biggest loser as well with Warner Brothers as their little brother.
29:33
There are Chamath, we have a consensus there.
29:35
Rare consensus between Sachs and I.
29:37
Well, who did you have for your biggest loser in business?
29:39
Well, you you guys partially win, okay?
29:42
Because I'm going to have to agree with you guys, but I think the biggest loser in business was the go woke community who tried to synthetically and artificially use all these social movements as a way to drive revenue and just got totally burned.
30:00
So, Disney, Bud, Target, and I think the statement from consumers is, "Look, just sell a product, stay in your lane, make a better and better product for us at lower and lower prices.
30:16
And otherwise, just let the politicians and the voters decide social issues."
30:20
And I think that was pretty clear.
30:24
All right, there you have it, folks.
30:24
If you're going to make Bud Light, people just want to drink the damn beer.
30:29
They're not interested in your politics. All right, here we go.
30:32
Biggest business surprise of 2023. Who do you got, Sachs?
30:36
Who was your biggest business surprise of 2023?
30:41
I think it was the Fed's bank term funding program or BTFP in response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the regional banking crisis. Mhm.
30:50
As you may recall, it wasn't just SVB, there were several dominoes in the regional banking system that fell.
30:56
It was SVB, Signature, First Republic, and even in Europe, Credit Suisse basically fell apart all because of the sudden spike in interest rates.
31:07
A lot of people tried to blame VCs for this, J Cal. Yeah, I remember.
31:11
Even you and me took took some heat. Yeah.
31:13
Uh the truth is that if the dominoes had fallen in a slightly different order, no one would have thought to blame VCs for this.
31:18
It was obviously the fact that rates had spiked up and these banks got caught offsides because their deposit base is volatile and they had loaded up on government bonds at a 1% interest and then the value of those bonds plummeted.
31:35
The Fed then stepped in to prevent this from turning into a contagion.
31:40
That was where the BTFP came in and I'm ambivalent about it because I think that we don't know the long-term consequences of the Fed basically providing this liquidity to the banking system.
31:52
However, it's very clear to me that there was a regional banking crisis underway and the Fed stepping in, I think probably saved us from having a recession this year. Amazing. So, the Fed there.
32:02
I picked Facebook for my biggest surprise this year.
32:07
They changed the name of the company 2 years ago to Meta.
32:09
They were pouring tens of billions of dollars into VR, which nobody wanted to use.
32:16
The CEO was focused on the wrong thing, but they turned it around.
32:18
The stock dropped to 90 and Zuckerberg, I guess, didn't want to lose and so he laid off tens of thousands of employees, said every no more middle managers, everybody's got to get to work, and they doubled down on their existing businesses, and they've made some great progress on AI.
32:33
So, my biggest business surprise was the resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook.
32:40
Chamath, who did you have for your biggest business surprise? I'll pick J.
32:44
Powell and the Fed capitulation.
32:49
I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for longer. For quite a while now.
32:54
And I was really surprised when J.
32:58
Powell had this press conference in December in early December and just basically capitulated and just said, "You know what guys, we're going to be cutting probably three times next year."
33:08
That was effectively the gist of what he said.
33:12
And immediately the 10-year basically just completely changed course and it went from almost at 5% to below 4% within a matter of two and a half or three weeks.
33:22
So, and then the stock market has basically done nothing but go straight up. Hmm.
33:29
That's a huge surprise to me because I think now what the setup is for 2024 is basically we will melt up up until the first cut and then there'll probably be some real selling.
33:42
And I I would not have predicted that.
33:44
The markets have become a lot more accommodative as a result. I didn't expect that. So, J.
33:48
Powell really I think surprised a lot of us.
33:52
He could have been more tempered but he did essentially decide to give away the playbook in the last month of the year here.
34:00
And it's important for everybody to understand the Fed acts independently of the administration.
34:05
It's just a coincidence, correct Sachs, that their cuts are going to come just in time for Biden economics.
34:13
And if it happens to go up in the next nine months, that has nothing to do with the Biden administration who might benefit from that if the economy goes back.
34:21
Jason, Nick, I have an I have a quote that I sent Nick.
34:23
This is a This is what Larry Summers said and I just think it's such an unbelievable quote that is just worth internalizing.
34:33
If you just start reading here, so I prefer the Volcker-Greenspan approach, which is to recognize that the Fed is a little bit like the Delphic Oracles.
34:41
People regarded them as omniscient and omnipotent, but they were in fact neither.
34:45
So, the Oracles kept their pronouncements vague and oracular, not concrete and specific because it was impossible to be concrete and specific without being wrong frequently and undercutting credibility.
34:55
Sure, I mean, that is just the perfect Keep it general, yeah. Keep it general.
34:59
of what probably should have happened in these pressers.
35:03
And this was an example where it was the exact opposite and the market just took it and said, "I'm off to the races."
35:09
Just to agree with Adam buttress it.
35:11
It's not only the fact that they gave this guidance this year, as you remember back when we started having inflation, the Fed still stuck to the story that it would not be raising rates for some extended period of time.
35:24
And a lot of these banks that had problems basically because they bought too many long-term government bonds, a lot of those bonds were bought during that period when the Fed was assuring them it wasn't going to be jacking up rates. Mhm.
35:36
So, if the Fed hadn't misled them, maybe they would have made better risk decisions. Yeah. So, it works both ways.
35:43
Freeberg, got a business surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the Bestie Awards?
35:47
The biggest surprise was Sam Altman's Alston and return all in a weekend.
35:51
So, that was kind of crazy.
35:53
So, I just give it to that. Nothing else to be said.
35:55
Okay, the flip flop, love it.
35:55
Okay, best science breakthrough.
35:57
This is everybody's favorite Also the time when Sachs goes and takes a leak.
36:02
2023, biggest science breakthrough. I've got one. You got one, Sachs?
36:04
You're awake during the show? Sachs, go ahead.
36:08
What's the biggest science breakthrough for you, Sachs?
36:11
Well, according to NASA, there's a new look at Uranus. That's right, J Cal. That's right, J Cal.
36:16
These are never-before-seen deep penetrating shots of Uranus.
36:20
How deep and penetrating are these?
36:25
Very deep, very penetrating from the James Webb Space Telescope.
36:27
Uh Freebird, when your anus gets probed this deeply, what's your takeaway?
36:34
What What's the feeling you get in this deep probing of your anus? All wonder, mystery. All wonder? Yeah.
36:44
Well, That's a space colonoscopy.
36:45
Something gets moved within. Absolutely.
36:48
I'm going to save you for last, Freebird. Chamath, you have one?
36:51
Yeah, I think that this unfortunately did not get nearly the attention it deserves, but I'm going to pick the CRISPR FDA-approved CRISPR treatment of sickle cell anemia.
36:59
I think that this is just an incredibly important breakthrough.
37:02
And so, you know, sickle cell basically is just a condition where the shape of your red blood cells change.
37:07
It causes a lot of very painful inflammation and damage.
37:13
Disproportionately affects the black population, African-American population.
37:18
And so, now there's an approved therapy, which goes in and makes the gene edits and fixes these folks.
37:22
So, congratulations to Vertex and CRISPR, and I I think it's just incredible.
37:28
There was my big breakthrough was this brain decoder technology.
37:31
We didn't talk about it here on the show, but this project was crazy.
37:35
They They did MRI scans or fMRI scans of blood flow to different areas in the brain.
37:40
They then had people listen to podcasts like The Moth, and they tracked individuals' brain activity with specific words that were said during the podcast.
37:54
Then they had them repeat words.
37:55
Then they attached it to a language model, GPT-1, I believe, and narrowed down what people were thinking.
38:04
Then they had people think thoughts, and it started to use the predictive model of GPT-1 and combined it with what was happening in their brain chemistry.
38:11
Now, this is a far away from being able to read people's minds, but for somebody who couldn't speak, let's say, the idea that you could think and then have your thoughts and the story you were telling actually come out of a computer just by thinking would be miraculous.
38:24
Obviously, Neuralink does this with a direct connection.
38:27
But fascinating work you've done here.
38:30
Sach is still thinking about Uranus.
38:31
He's He's going deep into Uranus right now. He's reading that paper.
38:33
I can see it in his eyes.
38:35
You guys know I got a colonoscopy? Thank goodness. How was it?
38:38
I got I got it on a put you under? Tuesday.
38:40
Yeah, but I got I didn't get the propofol. I got Demerol. I think Demerol. Oh, you got to go prop.
38:47
I had like the twilight sedation.
38:47
So, it's kind of like, you know, it was great.
38:51
Don't get me wrong, but it was like 15-20 minutes.
38:52
Like it was not But you were a kind of awake and lucid while they were through. Yeah.
38:59
You woke up halfway through? Yeah. Huh.
39:00
Did they give you a drink?
39:03
A little red wine or anything? Nothing? No?
39:04
No, they didn't talk to me.
39:07
No, I I just saw the I saw the screen.
39:07
I was like, what the heck?
39:09
And then I just went back to sleep.
39:13
Let me tell you, propofol, it's drip, drip, drip, and then you wake up 4 hours later.
39:17
It's the most restful sleep you ever had. That's the way to go. No, dude.
39:20
I had a I had a twilight 90 minutes, maybe. It's an hour, yeah.
39:23
I had I had like a 20-minute twilight sedation. That was it.
39:26
I asked them to go back up in there twice just to make sure.
39:30
Freeberg, enough about Uranus.
39:32
What was your biggest science surprise of '23?
39:34
I know it's hard to surprise you.
39:36
I know you guys want to hear some crazy specific thing, but I I actually just said that there were too many breakthroughs with machine learning models with AI this year to list.
39:46
LLMs that can run on small desktop machines that are open source that outperform all models that were in existence even a few months prior.
39:54
It highlights the leaps and bounds of this trajectory of of development in models.
39:58
And there's other specific examples like we talked about DeepMind's graph cast model, which is a a graph neural network on the show.
40:07
And obviously all the generative models in imagery and movies and music, but it's just such an extraordinary time to see us leverage our combined capabilities to drive these extraordinary gains.
40:19
is pace of language models or the pace of AI development?
40:21
Just all these breakthroughs in aggregate.
40:22
I mean, I I I I think it's it's hard it's hard to pay attention to anyone.
40:25
There's a constellation of change underway. It's incredible. Okay.
40:28
Now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan.
40:33
Who is your biggest flash in the pan, Chamath?
40:35
Oh my gosh, this is a Well, I'll I'll tell you what I could be business, it could be society, it could be pop culture. I wrote down SBF. Okay.
40:46
I think like from what looked like a too good to be wunderkind, frankly just turned out to be an Adderall addicted grifter.
40:53
And he stole from user accounts.
40:58
Sacks, I hope that doesn't hit too close to home. Who is yours? Same ballpark.
41:01
I said effective altruism.
41:03
The EA movement took a big hit with SBF.
41:06
I would have thought that'd be enough to polish it off, but then we had the OpenAI board oust Sam Altman, like we talked about.
41:16
Apparently, that was driven by a couple of their non-profit board members who were effective altruists.
41:23
I think the failure of that whole debacle will put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement.
41:27
Okay, Freeberg, you got a flash in the pan for 2023.
41:33
the obvious breakthrough in superconducting room temperature material LK-99. Yeah. It came and it went.
41:39
Everyone thought it was going to change the world.
41:40
Couple weeks later, couldn't be replicated, was disproven ultimately.
41:46
And for a hot minute there, everyone thought the world was going to change.
41:49
So it was super exciting to see room temperature superconductivity and the search for room temperature superconducting materials get so much attention.
41:56
As I mentioned, it's something I've thought a lot about since I was 13 years old.
41:59
So it's super cool, but didn't happen. Came and it went.
42:04
I went with a wildcard here.
42:06
I said George Santos, the diva drama queen and congressman who slayed from 2023 to 2023.
42:14
And election campaign funds to buy designer clothes and get Botox.
42:19
So, he asked Queen And Sephora. And Sephora. Not bad. Not bad.
42:24
He asked Queen just making bank over at Cameo.
42:29
Going to have him come in.
42:29
He's going to be a He's going to do a quick cameo here on All-In podcast. All right. Best CEO. Your best CEO. Best CEO. I'll go first. I'll go first. I haven't got first yet.
42:42
I picked a wild card here. I went Taylor Swift.
42:45
$4 billion in revenue from the tour and the merchandise and the movie and everything.
42:49
Each tour stop generates $90 million for the city she lands in. She's getting 85%.
42:55
She went direct to movie theaters with that concert movie and made a quarter billion dollars.
43:02
She's hands-down the best CEO of 2023 for me. Who you got, Chamath?
43:06
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
43:11
I just think the gross tonnage of market cap dollars he added in 2023 plus figuring out how to close Activision plus retaining maximum optionality with OpenAI is just a master class in heads-down management. Well done. Sachs, who do you got?
43:33
I have Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and king of the GPU.
43:36
We talked about the Magnificent Seven, but none was more magnificent than Nvidia, whose stock is up 235% and earnings and forecast keep blowing doors off.
43:48
Jensen has been planning this moment for many years before the whole AI frenzy took hold and Nvidia is now reaping the benefit of that. Who do you got? Friedberg.
43:57
I give it to Sam Altman because I don't think any individual has generated more attention on a private company and and effect on the world and the future than Sam Altman and OpenAI.
44:08
And I think that he's been aggressive in raising capital.
44:13
This guy can raise like he can raise.
44:16
And then he overbets on people. He he finds talent.
44:18
He gives them extraordinary comp packages, gets them to come and work on this this extraordinary effort, and then gets them to deliver results.
44:24
He pushes the limits, he pushes the boundaries.
44:28
Even beyond what's comfortable for his board members.
44:32
Clearly there you know there there comes the good and the bad.
44:33
And then even after he got ousted by his board, his entire employee base threw a coup and got him back.
44:39
And sure everyone's got their economic motivations to see that happen.
44:42
But I still think that the setup was you know largely his his work.
44:47
So he does deserve credit for that.
44:49
So all in I think it's it's an incredible year for Sam Altman.
44:53
Now we move on to 2023 best investor.
44:56
Chamath, who was your best investor for 2023 here at the Bestie Awards?
44:58
It was a continuation of the last couple of years.
45:04
But it's the pod shops and specifically Citadel.
45:06
So I give that award to Ken Griffin.
45:10
You know pod shops I think have really become the hallway bully of the public capital markets and Citadel is the kingpin.
45:20
They returned $7 billion to their investors in 23.
45:23
I think if you go back since 2020 they've returned more than 20 billion.
45:28
They generated you know 15% very steady returns uncorrelated to the market. It's just a machine.
45:34
I mean it's incredible it's an incredible business that he's built.
45:38
So he is there's nobody close. Sacks, what do you got?
45:43
I've got Bill Ackman here for timing the bond market perfectly.
45:47
He shorted bonds for most of the year making hundreds of millions of dollars.
45:51
And then on October 23rd he announced that he was covering his positions and that it was too risky to stay short in bonds and he was going long.
45:59
And that very day was the high point of the 10-year bond yield.
46:02
The market made a bottom on October 27th.
46:04
Since then, yields have plummeted, which means that the value of bonds has soared.
46:08
And the best part of it is that Ackman is using his new FU money to take on Ivy League university presidents for their woken DEI double standards, grifting, and plagiarism. Well done. All right.
46:20
Free bird, what do you got?
46:20
I also said Ackman for his timing on the the Treasury trade.
46:24
I was right there with you guys, except I wanted to go with the wild card.
46:27
I am astounded by the growth of TikTok.
46:31
And I just worked backwards.
46:31
Arthur Dantchik, who I've never met, from Susquehanna International Group, referred to as SIG in the industry, still owns, according to sources, 15% of this company, which could be worth three, four, 500 billion dollars when it goes out.
46:46
And despite all the saber-rattling, the CCP has not divested from it, even though Trump and Biden both said they were going to try to do that.
46:54
And ByteDance was caught spying on American journalists using their TikTok data.
46:59
So, the fact that that investment is still in place, to me, is extraordinary.
47:02
So, congratulations to them, but I'd sell it quick. All right. Now we move on.
47:06
We're moving quickly here. 2023, best turnaround.
47:11
Who's your best turnaround, Chamath?
47:13
This was like 3 years in the making, but I'll give it to Novo Nordisk.
47:15
I think the amount of attention that Novo has gotten for Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus in 2023 was incredible. Mhm.
47:26
But you have to go back to the last decade, where the first 5 years there was just not much activity, and they had to maintain their investment, stay strong, stay focused, and then starting in about 2019, the stock has been about a four or five X in the last four or five years.
47:43
And I think these semaglutide GLP-1s are here to stay.
47:47
They're transformational on society.
47:51
So, that was an enormous task of corporate focus.
47:53
So, I'll give the turnaround award to Novo Nordisk. Sacks, what you got?
47:58
In light of what's happening right now in the crypto markets, I'm going to go with Solana. Oh. Wow.
48:09
It began the year at about $9 a token.
48:11
It's now at 92 as of this moment.
48:14
Obviously, it's very volatile, but it's up roughly 10 X this year to date.
48:15
And in light of the fact that various unscrupulous actors on the internet accuse some of us of of buying Solana at at a discount and dumping it on retail without any evidence, and that wasn't true.
48:33
Let's just say that those of us who are still holding bags of Solana are very happy campers right now. Oh, bag holders. Bag holder for the win. Ooh. Estimates.
48:44
Freeberg, who do you got?
48:44
Biggest business turnaround?
48:46
I give it to Dara and Uber.
48:48
When he took over that business, I think it was an 8 to 9 billion dollar net loss in 2019.
48:55
5 billion dollar EBITDA run rate now.
48:57
Incredible forecasting, incredible skill in forecasting the sensitivities in that business, by the way. Say more. Say more.
49:02
And you know, obviously he's seen the market cap just this year grow from 50 billion to 126 billion as of today.
49:11
So, give it to Dara for the big turnaround.
49:12
Product sucks though, I will say.
49:14
It's gotten expensive, hard to get an Uber, sit around wait forever.
49:16
So, Dara, please fix that Otherwise, uh good job. Well done.
49:23
I went with a one that you guys gave awards to in on all the previous awards.
49:27
Sam Altman is all over this year's Besties.
49:28
I I thought going from being fired for malfeasance to becoming a martyr, and then I'm the captain now.
49:37
You can throw in the I'm the captain now meme right here, Nick, for the pod.
49:42
In about 10 days, he captured three full news cycles, was named CEO of the year, and the palace intrigue, raising money for an Nvidia killer in the Middle East.
49:51
I mean, this guy is like James Bond plus a CEO.
49:56
So, what a great turnaround from fired to desired, Sam Altman.
49:59
All right, let's go to our next one here.
50:01
2023, the worst company of the year.
50:04
This is the company that is loathsome and horrible in our opinions.
50:13
And it's That's all it is, folks.
50:13
It's just four dudes' opinions.
50:14
Sachs, in your opinion, what was the worst company of 2023?
50:20
I'm going to go with Pfizer.
50:22
Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an exposé on the inner turmoil at Pfizer as its market cap has lost $140 billion in valuation 2023.
50:30
By the way, that headline is ridiculous.
50:32
Pfizer did not save the world.
50:37
The reason why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for Paxlovid and for COVID boosters.
50:48
Apparently, people do not see the value in those products.
50:51
They finally figured it out.
50:53
I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines.
51:04
The CEO, Albert Bourla, was confronted in Davos by citizen journalists for this lack of transparency back in January of this year.
51:10
And what's interesting is that if you read the Wall Street Journal piece, even his own employees are questioning Bourla's candor when he announced on a company-wide virtual town hall that the company was embarking on a cost-cutting effort.
51:24
The chat room erupted in snark.
51:24
Quote, "Future is bright, but you might get fired" is how one employee characterized Bourla's spin.
51:32
This led another employee to reply, quote, "Dumpster fires are always bright."
51:36
All right, Friedberg, worst company of 2023 for you.
51:39
You have a worst company, Mux low sum? I do.
51:41
I'm going to get through this without getting interrupted.
51:45
The worst company of 2023 is Muyuan Food Stuff.
51:48
This company is pure evil.
51:51
It's got 137,000 employees. It's based in China.
51:54
It's the world's largest slaughterer of pigs. Slaughters 2.
51:56
1 million pigs per year with the world's largest pig farm near Nanyang where they basically take pigs from birth and breed them all the way through to slaughter.
52:08
During their entire lives, these pigs never get to move more than a few inches.
52:11
They live in these multi-story housing units that they never get to see sun or the light from the outside.
52:18
Through their whole lives, they're kept separate from their families.
52:19
Pigs are as smart as most dogs and even young children.
52:25
And at the end of their very painful, awful existences, they're slaughtered and fed to a growing population.
52:31
China consumes over a billion pigs a year.
52:33
It's a horrific situation. So.
52:40
That's the most loathsome company of 2023. Sounds delicious. I'm sorry, GUYS. DUDE.
52:49
YOU WENT OFF CAMERA, DUDE. MAN.
52:50
YOU you you were went off camera for you, Jacob. You started laughing. It's not a funny thing. laughing.
52:57
That's why I started laughing.
52:59
I mean, I had 15 jokes, but I'm not going to make any of them.
53:00
Uh yeah, but none of us are for factory farming. It's it's horrible.
53:05
Who is your worst company, Chamath? Come on, Chamath. Get in the game here.
53:09
Who is your worst company?
53:09
It's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank. Mhm.
53:14
One stole customer accounts and the other one just was run by a CEO and a risk management infrastructure that really imperiled and almost imperiled an entire industry. There you go. For me, it was Fox News.
53:26
They deceived their loyal customers by knowingly spreading fake news about voting machines.
53:31
They wound up firing their most loved host and our fifth bestie, Tucker Carlson, and they paid record-setting fines for misleading the public and creating massive division in our country.
53:43
And they're facing an even bigger lawsuit, a $2.
53:45
7 billion lawsuit with another election technology company that will happen in 2025.
53:54
Pension funds are now suing this loathsome company because they lost so much money for them.
53:58
So, my worst company of the year is Fox News. All right.
54:05
Sacks, you have something to say? I'm sorry.
54:07
I saw you going for the microphone there.
54:08
I'm not going to dissent Fox after they fired Tucker. Exactly. Exactly.
54:11
I mean, that's why I put it in there for you.
54:13
I do think the judgments are the magnitudes of the judgments are ridiculous. Hm, okay. Now it's time.
54:19
We're going to have a little bit of fun here. Best meme. Your best meme. Fun stuff.
54:26
I'll start it off this year.
54:26
I loved the Boston cop on a slide.
54:28
I don't know if you guys have seen this one, but it went super viral.
54:33
They've made millions of versions of it.
54:35
There's just a cop in Boston going down a slide.
54:43
And the backstory here, bunch of cops were told there's a slide that's too dangerous in Boston.
54:46
One of them tried to do their duty and confirm that it was in fact dangerous, and he got injured coming down the slide.
54:52
And now anytime something is going off the track, whether it's a market or a company, you play that clip.
55:03
Sacks, you're a master of memes.
55:03
What do you got for us this year in the 2023 Bestie Awards?
55:07
Well, I I think the meme of the year had to be the GFI.
55:09
Elon's answer to Bob Iger's attempt to blackmail him.
55:16
Nick, can but we need to see this in the GIF version.
55:17
The way the hand motions are, it's this, then this, and then it comes back in. Good for you.
55:25
It's like a conductor of an orchestra.
55:27
Just a standard good for you.
55:27
Chamath, did you have a Did you have a favorite, Chamath, a favorite meme of 2023?
55:32
Yeah, Nick, if you want to just throw it up there.
55:38
I'm a journalist and it's a kid.
55:42
No, it's not a journalism. I'm a journalist.
55:44
What what is this talking about?
55:46
I think it's it's what we all know and I think it was further exposed this year just the the brazen naked ambition and corrupt nature of the mainstream media.
55:58
Hey Jason, you said it really well and I and it really made an impact on me, so I want to give you credit.
56:01
We are all citizen journalists investigative journalists now.
56:06
And I think that that's true.
56:06
I think we all have a responsibility to pick the information source and to vet it. Yeah.
56:16
And never been more true than this year.
56:18
You got to have multiple sources triangulate the truth for yourself.
56:22
But yeah, I wouldn't trust the mainstream media at this point, you know, as but one of many sources.
56:27
Freeberg, got a favorite meme? Got a favorite meme?
56:30
No, I didn't put anything on this.
56:34
Okay, you gave us 6 minutes on pigs being killed, but you can't come up with one meme. Okay.
56:39
You can't come up with a meme. Come on, man.
56:40
I think it's kind of funny actually. It's kind of funny. He has no meme. He's memeless.
56:47
Wait, we need to play the wah wah wah music.
56:52
All right, best new tech. Best new tech.
56:54
We got to keep things moving.
56:54
Last year it was fusion and GPT across the board.
56:58
This year I'll just get all mine out of the way real quick.
57:00
I'm going to go with something more specific.
57:01
ChatGPT's app has been extraordinary. It now has 4. 0 in it. It has DALL-E in it.
57:06
I've been making incredible images to go with my my Substack and my blog posts that I would have paid thousands of dollars, you know, for each one of those when I was doing magazines and they have voice chat.
57:19
If you haven't connected ChatGPT's voice app to the new action button on the iPhone 15, there's a button above your volume called action.
57:26
You can map it to a specific feature inside of any app.
57:31
I mapped it to voice chat on chat GPT.
57:34
When I'm driving with my kids, they have a question, we put it in and we just start asking questions about history, science, whatever it happens to be, pop culture, music to chat GPT-4 and it is an extraordinary breakthrough app.
57:48
And it's, you know, been downloaded I think hundreds of millions of times now or over 100 million.
57:52
Incredible, incredible progress there.
57:54
Chamath, you got a best tech? Best new tech?
57:58
I don't think there was anything meaningful in 2023.
57:59
I think there was a lot of improvements to things that were founded and started in 2020 or 2021 or 2022.
58:08
Nothing new that caught my eye this year. Sacks.
58:12
I have Starlink for JetSuiteX.
58:15
Uh I of course I've never used it, but I heard it's great.
58:20
But if you do fly with other humans who you don't know, I I'm looking forward to uh Starlink for private aviation as well, but I've heard it's a real game-changer on commercial flights and every kind of flight. Freeber. Best new tech.
58:35
My best new tech of this year, I think is really important as we race to keep the promise of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation, which is open-source locally run LLMs.
58:49
So, you can take a an LLM and you can run it on your machine.
58:54
You don't have to be connected to the internet.
58:56
You don't have to have a third-party service provider making a LLM available to you.
59:01
And so, this allows the continued development and pursuit of productivity gains and new capabilities that emerge from these LLMs by making them local, offline, disconnected from the internet and and away from the scrutability of agencies that want to check your model and make sure it's okay.
59:20
So, this is really important to me.
59:21
I do think like my broader trend right now is I think that there's this really scary, big shift of you're either going to end up in a new enlightenment or you're going to end up in a new dark ages.
59:31
And I think we're seeing this play out in all these conflicts around the world, in all of this regulation, and all of the the technology that's being deemed either a threat or an opportunity.
59:43
And so I I think any technology capability that allows us to pursue the enlightenment is a winner for me.
59:48
So anyway, this was a big shift that happened this year and there's multiple models that were publicly available that are free, open source, that you can run. Okay, 2023 best trend.
59:58
Chamath, what was the best trend 2023 for you?
1:00:03
I actually didn't really couldn't figure one out. Okay.
1:00:05
Sachs, you got a best trend for 2023?
1:00:08
Something that happened often and became a trend.
1:00:12
My best trend is the return of color blindness as the standard and the pushback on DEI.
1:00:17
We already talked about the university presidents and what Bill Ackman is doing.
1:00:20
I would add to that that the Supreme Court banned race-based affirmative action in university admissions in June.
1:00:28
And red state governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis took that as a green light to shut down DEI programs in their public colleges and universities.
1:00:37
I think that this is a good trend and hopefully it continues next year because America should be a colorblind meritocracy.
1:00:43
Friedberg, what was your best trend of 2023?
1:00:49
The profitability focus at young companies, particularly in an age of AI co-pilot tools for software development.
1:00:56
From what I've seen, it's pretty incredible.
1:00:57
In single-person efforts can yield what historically has required six, 12, or more people to do using co-pilot tools and AI.
1:01:05
So software development is accelerated, new products, and entire companies can be built by single individual at very low cost building totally customized software.
1:01:15
So from what I've seen, it's not widely adopted, these these capabilities as you guys probably have seen as well.
1:01:20
It's starting to be, but just imagine once the majority of people are using these co-piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools, it's really going to increase productivity globally as it finds its way into every business and everyone can become an entrepreneur and so on.
1:01:37
So, it's it's incredible to see.
1:01:40
I too, Sachs, was looking at the issue of DEI and I framed mine as DEI dying and meritocracy thriving.
1:01:46
That was the best trend for me.
1:01:48
So, we are once again simpatico, you and I.
1:01:50
DEI dying and meritocracy thriving. Nicely done.
1:01:53
You really are proving your a centrist. Yeah, yeah.
1:01:57
I mean, I think or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought, that seems like the most logical thing to do. Yeah, you're right. Absolutely, 100%. 100%.
1:02:06
We figured this out some time ago.
1:02:09
Yeah, I don't know why we have to rehash it. Okay, 2023, worst trend. I'll lead it off.
1:02:14
I had three here of worst trends.
1:02:16
Number one, anti-Semitism.
1:02:18
Absolutely disgusting and horrible.
1:02:18
Two, Trump's rehabilitation.
1:02:20
We'll just leave it at that.
1:02:22
And then three, people of low moral character using the freedom of speech movement to whitewash their horrible personal behavior.
1:02:29
Yes, I'm talking about Alex Jones to all the mids in the comments.
1:02:34
Sachs, what was the worst trend for you?
1:02:35
You had to have three, didn't you?
1:02:36
Well, I'm going to go with anti-Semitism.
1:02:38
Those are my two two runners-up. fair enough. Yeah.
1:02:41
I think you guys will like my worst trend.
1:02:43
It is the metastasizing national debt.
1:02:47
This chart really makes it clear.
1:02:47
You can see here the national debt as a function of deficit and revenues and it's a upside-down hockey stick. Jesus.
1:02:58
If a company could produce user growth that looked like this, I would invest all day long.
1:03:03
However, this is not growth.
1:03:03
This is basically how much we owe.
1:03:08
And it is a bipartisan problem.
1:03:08
It's been going on for really 20 plus years, but it is getting worse and worse under Biden. Yeah.
1:03:18
Eight trillion added to the deficit under Trump and looks like five to six trillion under Biden.
1:03:21
Well, you know, we did have a COVID We did have meltdown where the economy was down 30% year-over-year, so The tax cuts and COVID, yeah.
1:03:31
Both parties supported that bailout and in hindsight it was excessive. Yeah.
1:03:35
Biden's quote-unquote stimulus was passed on straight party lines after COVID was already over. Yeah.
1:03:42
So, I think we should just make sure to apportion the blame correctly.
1:03:44
But like I said, bipartisan problem. Yeah, I agree.
1:03:48
Bipartisan and Trump did a very ill-timed tax cut before COVID, so it's a double hit.
1:03:53
If you want to compare it, in eight years Obama added eight trillion, so it was one trillion a year.
1:04:01
These new guys getting close to two trillion per year.
1:04:04
So, they doubled the velocity of spending.
1:04:07
Just completely disastrous.
1:04:07
Chamath, what's the worst trend for you?
1:04:09
I just think it's the the general state of affairs amongst our young people, our 20-year-olds and our 30-year-olds, I think are really struggling. And it's gotten worse.
1:04:21
I'll give you two examples.
1:04:25
Here, you see on your screen, this year, 158,000 more Americans died than expected, which is more than all the wars combined in Vietnam.
1:04:36
And when you look at where those death rates are, those death rates were coming from 35 to 44-year-olds, which was up 26% and 25 to 34-year-olds, which is up 20% above pre-COVID levels, and all we can point to from the government establishment is that it's smoking and a bad diet, which doesn't really hang together.
1:04:56
And then the second trend is when you look at just general marriage rates amongst these same cohort of people, it's meaningfully worse than every cohort above it.
1:05:04
So, just societally, these folks are not tracking.
1:05:11
In whatever dimension you want to measure sort of like happiness, fulfillment, stability, safety, something is meaningfully wrong in these cohorts of people.
1:05:18
And we owe it to them to figure it out.
1:05:20
The one thing you missed there, uh Chamath, in the Western world at least, 36% increase in suicide over the past two decades.
1:05:26
So, a lot of It's another one.
1:05:28
So, that might be the main one, I think, in this is the the mental health issues are acute.
1:05:34
Okay, we have Friedberg you're left for the worst trend.
1:05:37
The Bestie Award for worst trend of 2023, what do you got? I don't know.
1:05:41
I had one, I'm going to change it on the fly.
1:05:42
I'm going to go with the normalization of spending.
1:05:43
I think it's probably the worst trend.
1:05:46
Like, it's, you know, it used to be a big deal.
1:05:50
Remember when the TARP program happened in '08 and it was an incredible single line item of $800 billion to support the Troubled Asset Relief effort to try and keep the economy stable by buying up all of this failing debt and supporting all of these equities and keeping these businesses going.
1:06:10
And now it's like $100 billion for this, uh trillions for that.
1:06:14
It's like we've normalized spending and COVID just made it worse.
1:06:18
So, to your guys's point earlier about the acceleration of spending, once you spend a dollar, you think it's okay to spend a dollar, and then next time you spend two, it's not that bad, it's only a dollar more.
1:06:26
And the next time you spend five, it's only three bucks more.
1:06:29
And suddenly, it becomes normal.
1:06:31
And this normalization catches up to us.
1:06:33
I've harped on this enough, so I won't go into it too much, but I think that's the worst trend.
1:06:36
Who did you uh change from?
1:06:36
What was your What was your original?
1:06:38
My original was the merging of the oppressor-oppressed ideologies that are in diametric opposition to each other.
1:06:46
I just found this more ironic than the worst trend, I think, which is like LGBTQ groups that were pro-Hamas, that were marching and supporting Hamas, which is anti-LGBTQ.
1:07:01
It was just so mind-blowing to me to see some of the behavior over the last couple of months that made absolutely no sense and it shows how little first principle thinking people are actually doing about the things that they're standing up for.
1:07:16
Standing up for a free Palestine is one kind of point, but being pro-Hamas when Hamas would have a responsibility of eradicating people like you is just is just nuts to me.
1:07:28
So I there's just some of the stuff that I've seen where the oppressor oppressed ideology is is trained to fit everything even if it makes absolutely no sense.
1:07:37
So it's just really frustrating to see.
1:07:42
Okay, now we go on to a little casual the bestie awards for 2023 favorite media.
1:07:49
Favorite media new things that came out in the media could be a video game, book, music, or a TV show.
1:07:52
I'll lead us off here just get it out of the way real quick.
1:07:57
For me Succession finale extraordinary one of the best pieces of television ever made.
1:08:04
And my sleeper was The Bear season 2 very niche show on FX.
1:08:07
I think I turned a lot of you on to it.
1:08:11
And season 2 had an episode episode 5 which is the forks episode in which Carmie sends Richie to intern at a very elite restaurant and he's charged with polishing silverware and Garrett and him get into it.
1:08:24
Why am I doing all this stupid stuff?
1:08:25
And he just tells him listen every day here is a freaking Super Bowl and it's just a great great amazing episode of television with extraordinary performances and writing Chamath.
1:08:37
Did you have any favorite media this year?
1:08:40
Anything that Taylor Swift did this year was White hot. You're a Swiftie. She is a tour de force.
1:08:48
She's incredible and she's a genius. What can you say? Nothing. Thanks.
1:08:55
I'm going to use my spot to draw attention to some podcasts that you may not have heard of.
1:09:01
Some geopolitics and world affairs podcast, so the probably my my number one is The Duran with Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou.
1:09:09
I'd also give honorable mention to Judge Napolitano's podcast and Colonel Daniel Davis.
1:09:16
I have found these three podcasts to be quite useful in understanding what's happening in the rest of the world.
1:09:22
And I found their reporting and analysis to be more accurate than anything you're going to get in the mainstream media.
1:09:29
Free break, any favorite media for you?
1:09:31
As we get close to wrapping here.
1:09:31
I recently read a book that I liked.
1:09:33
I don't know if I talked about it called The Idea Factory on the history of Bell Labs and the great age of American innovation. Strongly recommend it.
1:09:40
I had no idea how much this Bell Labs institution touched modern life from radar to the transistor to the nuclear bomb to computing even information theory was developed inside of Bell Labs.
1:09:56
It was an incredible organization that took its roots in an institutionalized monopoly which then enabled them to have one customer that was always a built-in customer but gave them the freedom and the resourcing to build all of these great things.
1:10:09
And for anyone that wants to say that monopolies stifle innovation, I encourage you to read this book because it really says the opposite may be true.
1:10:17
That a monopoly enables investment in long-term thinking and long-term ideas that you can never otherwise see. So I give it to that. I also had a softer one.
1:10:28
Have you guys ever watched Bobby Alt's podcast?
1:10:30
I found this so funny this year. You guys ever seen it?
1:10:32
Her interview with Drake is hilarious. It's so funny.
1:10:35
So she interviewed Drake, she's interviewed Cuban Oh yes, I know who you're talking about.
1:10:38
The the deadpanned Yeah, the deadpanned.
1:10:40
So she's got this like holy disinterested persona and it totally encapsulates like a Gen Z like a personality in a way that you don't get in any other media.
1:10:50
It's really and she's hilarious when she does these interviews.
1:10:53
And she's very unique like a Andy Kaufman or Jim Carrey like in that sense like unique in how she does this.
1:10:59
I just think like we'll see if the stick lasts.
1:11:01
Like she may end up kind of being tired soon and see if she has a second act.
1:11:06
interview was really good.
1:11:06
The one with Cuban I had two problems with it.
1:11:08
One, they sat on the ground and then two, Cuban's feet were really dirty.
1:11:12
Did you see the one with Shaq?
1:11:13
And so I was like, bro, like just keep the shoes on and just you know one was hilarious.
1:11:19
But anyway, she's she's got great content.
1:11:20
It's it's hit or miss by the way, I'll also say it's not consistent.
1:11:23
Hit or miss, but I don't know.
1:11:26
I just found her to be a little bit of a a unique standout in um in content this year.
1:11:31
Everyone's kind of me too, me too. It looks the same.
1:11:32
She she stood out a bit for me.
1:11:36
In that vein, have you seen Ziwe? Z I W E No.
1:11:39
She is a woman who interviews people and then she asks people very uncomfortable questions about race.
1:11:46
Like how many black friends do you have? Name them. And it is hilarious.
1:11:49
It is like the greatest bit ever. Ziwe Shout out to Ziwe.
1:11:54
And since we went there on on Who who's seen it? You saw it, Chamath? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
1:11:58
I mean, if you're on TikTok, you'll see it because she just had like Yeah, she just has anybody in pop culture on it. the George Santos on?
1:12:05
She had George Santos on the interview. Yeah. Wow.
1:12:09
And it was just so Incredible. crazy.
1:12:13
On the podcasting front, shout out to our friend Gwyneth Paltrow.
1:12:16
If you don't listen to the Goop podcast, she does like interviews every other time. Really good.
1:12:22
Red Scare, another great alternative podcast I like to listen to.
1:12:27
From the dirtbag left as they call it.
1:12:29
And shout out Preet Bharara's cafeinsidercafe. com. All right.
1:12:33
I think Is this the end, producer Nick? Are we here? Did we make it? Last one. Last one.
1:12:37
We have a special award here.
1:12:42
The self-immolation award.
1:12:44
This has been named after Rudy Giuliani.
1:12:46
So Rudy Giuliani self-immolation award.
1:12:50
And I this is a tough one to give this year Sachs.
1:12:55
Who do you have because this could be quite self-referential here. Go.
1:13:00
I am going to name Liz Magill, the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania. Huh. Who So well done.
1:13:07
had been vomiting on herself for 2 months in the aftermath of October 7th before she even appeared at that congressional hearing with the presidents of Harvard and MIT. Mhm.
1:13:14
She answered what was clearly a moral question with a tone-deaf legalistic answer Mhm.
1:13:21
saying that advocacy of genocide against Jews depends on context falls into question whether one is smart enough to be a university president.
1:13:30
It's not a job that demands that much intelligence, but it does require an instinct for knowing when and how to cover your own ass.
1:13:37
When she was finally forced to step down, it felt like a mercy killing. Yeah.
1:13:41
Wasn't she the one smirking, too? Yeah.
1:13:44
Wasn't she the one She had the awkward smirk.
1:13:45
That was what I found the most appalling was the awkward smirks. Yep.
1:13:49
Chamath, who let themself on fire most of all this year?
1:13:52
Who Who poured gasoline over their heads and just lit up a stogie?
1:13:58
I think it's the brand and reputation of the Ivies.
1:14:00
I think that there was irreparable harm done. Well done. Yes.
1:14:03
We've had generations now that have been taught that that is where we send our best and brightest kids.
1:14:11
But it turns out that they're getting indoctrinated into some very kind of extreme rhetoric that then produces these incapable first principles thinkers that will be the destruction of our society if we don't fix it.
1:14:23
So, I think Harvard applications were down 17% already.
1:14:29
I expect that trend across the Ivies to go way up.
1:14:35
I expect contributions to go down.
1:14:37
I expect governments to ratchet down their spending in those schools, and I expect some folks to try to take away their nonprofit status.
1:14:47
So, I think that we are going to reallocate the brand equity of the Ivy's to good schools.
1:14:58
And we will know what the good schools are based on their independence, their ability to churn out first principles thinkers, and their respect for freedom of speech without being moral idiots.
1:15:12
Friedberg, what do you got?
1:15:14
That's well said, Chamath. Ivy League presidents. Okay. Well done.
1:15:16
No no need to add too much more there, I guess.
1:15:19
You know, I was torn here between the namesake of this very award.
1:15:27
If you missed it, Rudy Giuliani had a $150 million judgment against him maybe 2 weeks ago for slandering two poor innocent people in his electoral scam that he ran with Trump.
1:15:37
And he I think is going to get indicted next year for these fake electorates.
1:15:43
So, follow the fake electorates one.
1:15:44
But that was a close one for me because Kanye West also lit himself on fire the past year with the Adidas contract and his anti-Semitism, getting kicked off Twitter X.
1:15:53
But I feel like that was mental illness, and I think Rudy Giuliani is just stupid.
1:15:57
So, I give it to Rudy Giuliani, the namesake of this award.
1:16:03
And I hope Kanye West that, J Cal, is I'm not going to defend him or his actions at all.
1:16:09
However, I do think I do think that judgment was excessive and it's part of a pattern of ridiculous judgments that we see when you have, for example, a DC jury pool judging a conservative or a Republican whose politics they disagree with.
1:16:27
The plaintiffs only asked for $48 million.
1:16:29
The jury awarded three times that. It's an excessive award.
1:16:33
I think a few million dollars as a penalty would have been a perfectly nice award.
1:16:37
I think to bankrupt the man, which is what you're talking about, is becoming a bit of a pile on.
1:16:42
And I'm all in favor of Rudy being the butt of jokes until the point where really you're talking about destroying his life.
1:16:50
I think it's gone way too far.
1:16:53
Yeah, these are words are curious in how large they are.
1:16:56
They all get appealed though, and they all come down.
1:16:58
So, I'm sure that'll come down by some massive percentage in the near future.
1:17:02
This has been the year-end episode. Can you believe it?
1:17:06
We made it another year, guys.
1:17:06
Here we are at the end of 2023.
1:17:07
We'll do our predictions next week, so you'll get our amazing predictions for 2024 in the next episode.
1:17:14
Any closing thoughts on the year we just had?
1:17:19
Freeberg, how you feeling here at the end of the year? Are you hopeful? Are you cheery? Are you sad? Are you excited?
1:17:26
I've been up since 5:00 a. m.
1:17:26
and I just drank beers, so I'm pretty tired. You're okay.
1:17:30
But with respect, that's kind of how the whole year feels, actually. Feel like I Exhausted?
1:17:35
Yeah, I just got up early, cranked through the day, had some beer, and I'm ready for a nap.
1:17:41
But I'm I'm probably more optimistic going into 2024 than I was going into 2023 cuz that's on a personal basis, and I think, yeah, there's just a lot going on today in the world.
1:17:53
Yeah, it's complex, isn't it?
1:17:55
I do think as long as we embrace the enlightenment and don't embrace the dark ages, we we stand a shot at keeping progress alive, and I think that's the the the the defining characteristics of human civilization is progress, and that's I I think ultimately resolves all the conflicts and other things.
1:18:12
We just got to keep it alive. Well said.
1:18:15
Chamath, how are you feeling here as we wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024?
1:18:19
I think 2022 and 2023 have been looking back, the most important 2 years of my professional career.
1:18:29
I think I benefited, like we all I think I think all four of us could say this, of just an incredible set of tailwinds.
1:18:36
And '22 and '23 were the first time where I was in a position of influence and capital and power where I had to confront that those tailwinds can quickly become headwinds and that we are not impervious to them. So, I like Friedberg.
1:18:51
I'm looking forward to '24 where I can try to put all these learnings to good use.
1:18:55
So, it's been generally good.
1:18:58
And '23 was the most important year of my life in the sense that I got remarried.
1:19:01
So, that's been a huge personal highlight. Yes, beautiful.
1:19:04
Love that you guys all came to that as well. a highlight for us, too. Absolutely beautiful.
1:19:10
But yeah, I'm ready to I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start '24.
1:19:13
Sacks, any closing thoughts here?
1:19:16
Well, I think one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we didn't have a recession.
1:19:20
I mean, I think most people were betting on a recession in '23.
1:19:22
They thought that a soft landing would be almost impossible.
1:19:27
And in fact, the data is that soft landings almost never occur.
1:19:31
Remember what Larry Summers said to us at our All-In Summit this year, which is soft landings are like second marriages.
1:19:38
It's the triumph of hope over experience.
1:19:41
Meaning, they almost never happen.
1:19:43
And so, the fact that we didn't get that, I think that was basically a pretty important bullet dodged.
1:19:47
Now, that being said, I do think that the whole B2B software industry definitely went through a recession.
1:19:52
But fortunately, I think we bottomed out and we're starting to see green shoots now.
1:19:57
So, things are returning to normal.
1:20:00
On the global stage, things are still okay in the sense that the US is not directly in a war, but man, it is pretty scary.
1:20:08
We could be pulled into Pretty dynamic. Very dynamic.
1:20:12
We could be pulled into a war in the Middle East any time.
1:20:14
We still have a proxy war going in Ukraine.
1:20:15
So, there are a lot of risks still on the horizon.
1:20:18
I'll just say for the gentlemen and for the audience, it has been wonderful to have all of you, the audience, the fans of the show, and you besties in my life over two really tough years.
1:20:29
It was also very proud of myself going into them.
1:20:32
I knew I was built for war and uh it was a war the last few years. It was difficult. It was hard.
1:20:39
But we all I think learned a lot and came out stronger because of it and I just want to give a particular shout-out to all of you guys for making this brand extraordinary and taking it to new heights.
1:20:49
Almost all the times I've I've built things, brands, and gadget, Silicon Insider reporter, All-In, whatever it is, it was a solo effort.
1:20:58
And it's just been really rewarding to be part of a team and I want to just give a particular note to uh Freeberg who I think all of us owe a real debt of gratitude towards.
1:21:05
He took the All-In Summit which was a very strong start in 2022 and he leveled it up in 2023 amazingly and I'm just so excited to to see what we do in 2024 with this amazing brand memberships, tequilas, another 50 episode, and a great All-In Summit next year I hope.
1:21:26
So, shout-out to my guy Freeberg.
1:21:30
For the dictator, the Sultan of Science, Chairman Dictator.
1:21:32
Sorry, apologize for getting that incorrect there. We'll get it right. Chairman Dictator.
1:21:36
And the Rainman, David Sacks.
1:21:38
I am the world's greatest moderator and we will see you in 2024. Bye-bye. Happy New Year. Love you guys. Happy New Year, Bye-bye. Love you, besties. Let your winners ride. Rainman, David Sacks.
1:21:58
And I said we open sourced this to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, besties. Queen of quinoa. Besties are back.
1:22:13
That is my dog taking a dump in his rear driveway, Sacks. Oh, man.
1:22:21
We should all just get a room and just have a one big huge orgy cuz they're all just useless.
1:22:24
It's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.
1:22:29
What are your thoughts What are your thoughts What?
1:22:34
We need to get mercy out. I'm going all in. I'm going all in.