back to indexE83: Market slide continues, and how to address Uvalde
Chapters
0:0 Bestie Guestie Brad Gerstner joins the show
1:0 All-In Summit recap and best moments
16:45 State of the markets, $ZM/$SNOW earnings, how much more uncertainty?
29:53 SNAP drops after miscalculating earnings targets, understanding signs of a true bottom, the end of entitlement
51:10 Down market end game, investor decisions, reasons for optimism, quick reset potential
65:17 Sacks explains his concept for "default investable," Besties share thoughts on proactive layoffs and course correction
72:27 Addressing Uvalde, legislative disappointment, potential preventative solutions
00:00:00.400 |
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the all in podcast. It's been a crazy couple of weeks 00:00:07.520 |
here we had the all in summit. And boy, was it amazing our bestie David Freiberg couldn't make 00:00:13.840 |
it today. He had some personal things he had to attend to. So joining us again, is Brad Gershner. 00:00:20.720 |
Welcome back to the fifth bestie on his Is this your fourth appearance now including the all in 00:00:26.560 |
summit. I think you've been on four times now. Very good. All right. That's about 5% of the 00:00:31.680 |
episodes. Nice, nice. I think that's a nice little chip in your in your in your your belt there. 00:00:37.760 |
I mean, unworthy replacement to Freiberg but I do what I nobody can replace Freiberg that is the 00:00:42.880 |
truth. Let your winners ride. Rain man David Sacks. We open source it to the fans and they've 00:00:54.560 |
just gone crazy. Love you guys. I see you guys next time. Bye. 00:00:56.400 |
Just going around the horn here. Chamath, did you have a favorite moment on stage a 00:01:04.400 |
favorite moment off stage? What is your general impressions of the all in summit 2022? 00:01:10.640 |
I thought the people I met were really impressive. I really enjoyed meeting people and 00:01:18.400 |
learning what they did. I also thought you and your team organized really an 00:01:26.320 |
incredible event. And I forgot how good you are at these things. But I give you a lot of credit. I 00:01:31.520 |
really enjoyed participating. The only thing that I was nervous about during that whole thing, which 00:01:38.480 |
probably limited a little bit of my fun was my mom was coming. She's 81. And so it was not I was not 00:01:46.720 |
super psyched to really be in the throes of all the parties to be honest, just because I was like, 00:01:51.440 |
I didn't I didn't necessarily want to get COVID. And I didn't want to introduce 00:01:56.240 |
it to her and got it. Yes, you know, Nat ended up getting really, really sick, but more like a flu 00:02:02.560 |
and a cold. Yeah. But you know, I've been fine. My mom's fine. I know a bunch of folks that came 00:02:10.160 |
unfortunately tested positive. So that was the only that's the only downside where I would I 00:02:15.040 |
would have wanted to be a little bit more carefree. But that was the only thing that was that but 00:02:20.560 |
that's not in anybody's control. So yeah, I think it was second I recall that when I had a Christmas 00:02:26.160 |
party. Like a week later, he called my Christmas party a super spreader even though I tested 00:02:34.160 |
everybody at the door every single person was negative at this. So my parents went to this 00:02:41.840 |
conference, they both got COVID. My aunt who lives in Miami, he was in her 70s. She got COVID. 00:02:47.920 |
Are they okay? By the way? Are they? Yeah, they're most important. 00:02:51.920 |
It's you know, it's Omicron. It was like, you know, it's like bad for two days. 00:02:56.080 |
And then you get better. So they're gonna be fine. Thank God. Yeah, one did and one didn't. 00:03:01.120 |
So my brother's got COVID. And so your brother's got it. Josh and Jamie both got it. And then 00:03:07.840 |
Josh's wife got it. So she took the Paxlovid. And everybody's great now. But yeah, if you go to my a 00:03:15.040 |
lot of people who came to the event, it was their first time out like this was for a lot of people, 00:03:19.760 |
I think very emotional and exciting because it was their first venture out. And if you go to Miami, 00:03:26.640 |
COVID, especially if the event organizer doesn't test anybody. 00:03:31.440 |
Impractical to test 850 people, nobody would come like not if you want to make a profit, right? 00:03:36.480 |
Nah, it wouldn't have actually been that expensive. You could put that on the people, 00:03:39.920 |
they could just, you know, share their results. But I think at this point, you know, even on the 00:03:44.000 |
planes going out there, nobody's wearing masks. I don't know if you know, well, you guys are 00:03:47.760 |
flying private. But you know, my flight out there, it was all you know, nobody's wearing 00:03:51.840 |
masks anymore. But anyway, Jay Cal, I think everybody who went to the conference, 00:03:55.920 |
took the risk upon themselves of COVID. And you know, it's not the end of the world or anything, 00:04:02.080 |
they're all fine. But I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy. My hypocrisy. Yes, exactly. It's like 00:04:08.000 |
you're like Nancy Pelosi or something where criticizing every time a Republican gets COVID, 00:04:13.920 |
it's their fault. Yes, when you throw a super spreader, and I think AIS now stands for all in 00:04:19.440 |
super spreader. Yeah, it's not your fault. It was well beyond your control. It was the virus. And in 00:04:24.720 |
fact, it was probably just Florida. It was just yes, it's the sense of I was gonna bring it up. 00:04:29.920 |
Both of you now have thrown super spreader events. Yes, but in mind, I tested. Yeah. It's not even 00:04:38.240 |
proven that mine was a super spreader. All right. In all seriousness, did you have a favorite moment 00:04:43.280 |
on stage or some reflections on the event? I thought the thing was really good, by the way. 00:04:47.680 |
And the only thing I'll say is the Palmer lucky thing was pretty incredible. Which will be we will 00:04:53.680 |
be releasing the palm. I'm excited to see that. I think that that episode is eye opening. Yeah, 00:05:01.360 |
we don't want to say too much. But I think that you were really I think you handled yourself 00:05:06.560 |
really well. Thank you for that. Chamath what actually happened? I wasn't there for that 00:05:11.840 |
portion. I haven't heard anything about a mini summary here of it. I guess I'll give you the 00:05:16.960 |
outside inversion. He gives what I can only describe as an incredibly 00:05:22.560 |
motivating breakdown of American defense and what his company and you know, you have to remember to 00:05:30.240 |
put it in context. This is a 29 year old young man who has now started to multi billion dollar 00:05:36.400 |
unicorn. So you know this, he's going to be around for a long time doing amazing things. 00:05:41.360 |
But he talks about Andrew, which is his defense company, really impressive. And then the whole, 00:05:47.920 |
you know, everybody's kind of like rousing and cheering and applauding. 00:05:51.040 |
And then he talks about the whole, you know, everybody's kind of like rousing and cheering and applauding. 00:05:51.440 |
And then he said, you know, I have something else that I want to get off my chest. And I was 00:05:56.320 |
standing beside Jason, backstage. Jason was looking at the monitor, I was looking at the 00:06:02.000 |
mirror at myself. But and checking your sweater. And he said, you know, there's a person here that 00:06:10.880 |
that has been, you know, really hard on me, you know, tried to ruin my life, attack my family, 00:06:15.120 |
and represents, you know, these really this strain of very influential people in Silicon Valley. 00:06:21.600 |
Who have gotten it totally wrong, basically. And he called out cancel culture, and then he 00:06:26.480 |
called out J Cal. And to Jake's credit, after he was done, Jake was the first one that walked out 00:06:32.800 |
on stage, shook Palmer's hand. And then we all sat down, we talked to him, and then the two ended up 00:06:37.520 |
hugging it out at the end. But there were moments that were very heated in the middle of it. The 00:06:41.840 |
whole thing was incredible to watch. I got to be honest with you. It was super dramatic. Yeah, 00:06:47.680 |
that the most shocking and surprising aspect of the whole thing was that a person as important 00:06:55.040 |
as Palmer and Lucky felt the need to get revenge on a person as unimportant as Jason. 00:07:00.240 |
That was the part I mentioned when he was like, my career was 00:07:05.280 |
when he said important people in Silicon Valley, I initially thought, Oh, my God, 00:07:09.280 |
he's talking about me. What did I say? I was I was thrown by that, too. If I'm being honest, 00:07:17.600 |
And I had to claw my way back, because Jason Calacanis said this. And I was like, 00:07:23.040 |
no, actually, I'm looking forward to when you're going to be a great episode. It's 00:07:30.480 |
going to be coming out next week. Thank you to all the speakers. 00:07:35.520 |
Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and Antonio Garcia Martinez for appearing. And you know, we did two 00:07:41.920 |
different panels. We did one on domestic politics with Glenn and Taibbi. And then the we did a 00:07:47.520 |
debate on Ukraine, which has now been published between Glenn and Antonio. And particularly, 00:07:53.120 |
I want to thank Antonio, because it did end up being a little bit of a two on one at the end, 00:07:57.760 |
which wasn't my intention. But I have my own views on it, too. Although I did try to be 00:08:01.920 |
somewhat restrained and even handed in the moderation. But it's a really good debate, 00:08:07.280 |
we should have had longer, we only had about 30 minutes. But you can see that online right now. 00:08:12.400 |
It actually is a great example of actually how to listen to somebody else having a completely 00:08:17.440 |
diametrically opposed view and still be respectful. I thought those guys were great to 00:08:20.960 |
listen to. I think it's a new format, Saxon. I think you know, somebody was like, hey, maybe you 00:08:24.400 |
and J Cal could do it. I think you and I moderating like two people with different sides. It could be 00:08:27.920 |
like a really interesting format for us for future events. Brad, did you have a favorite moment on 00:08:32.240 |
stage? Maybe outside of Elon? Of course, you can mention I would say, you know, maybe both on stage 00:08:37.840 |
and off stage. You know, I think listen, I think this podcast has taken some shots and probably 00:08:43.280 |
appropriately so at times for being a bunch of men. You know, I think, you know, I think this 00:08:47.360 |
is a great moment to be in the room, you know, a little bro culture, and the effort made to build 00:08:53.680 |
authentic community and diversity into that room. I've been to a lot of conferences, whether it's 00:08:59.680 |
Claire the alky, you know, Patty Wexler, extraordinary, you know, minds, women, 00:09:06.560 |
all diverse cultures, economic backgrounds, when we walked around the floor, he you know, Indiana, 00:09:13.360 |
Kentucky, West Virginia, everywhere, right, and who are starting companies, 00:09:17.280 |
authentic conversations, and frankly, we're grateful for the community, and the advice that 00:09:23.040 |
they were being given. These were from big startups to very small startups. And so for me, 00:09:28.800 |
that was a highlight the effort you made, I don't know, almost 40% women, you know, 00:09:33.920 |
both economic, I thought, as well as you know, geographic diversity. And then, you know, 00:09:40.080 |
listen, I had a moment after Bill and I after Gurley and I got off stage. I was stopped by a group of 00:09:47.200 |
founders. And they said, Hey, we need your help. I said, What? And they said, We are that company, 00:09:51.680 |
you and Bill were just talking about and said was screwed. We raised $100 million last November from 00:09:58.640 |
from Tiger at 100 times ARR, what do we do? Right? And like, like the fact that that you know, that 00:10:06.160 |
those conversations are going on, of course, they're not screwed. And it's a very interesting 00:10:10.080 |
company. But it led to a real conversation that you don't often have at conferences like that. And so I 00:10:17.120 |
thought it was much more than just a bunch of talking heads on stage. I thought it was a real 00:10:21.520 |
give and take in, you know, in the crowd afterwards, the parties, the in betweens. 00:10:27.280 |
And so I really enjoyed that. The other big thing that we avoided failing on was 00:10:35.600 |
putting back the AMAs. I think these AMAs are some of the most interesting parts of that 00:10:42.160 |
conference. And I think that we should make sure that we probably do an AMA Jason, like, both days, 00:10:47.040 |
we do a two day conference. The AMAs were awesome. Yeah, when the audience is asking us and just to 00:10:52.720 |
explain to people how we were able to, you know, curate the audience, we asked people, I think it's 00:10:58.400 |
a good playbook for other people if they want to steal it to, they could, they could pick the price 00:11:03.360 |
they wanted to pay based on their station in life. And so people said, I want to come up a 500, I'll 00:11:07.920 |
pay 1000, I'll pay 2500, instead of the 7500 ticket price, which was like 300 people in the audience. 00:11:13.200 |
And we just said, Hey, what do you love about the show? You know, what would coming to the show, 00:11:16.960 |
to the conference mean to you, and we kind of just sorted that and we look for people who are 00:11:20.320 |
passionate about the show. And then, you know, the thing that stuck out to me, and I know Freeburg 00:11:25.280 |
had a great time as well, was the passion of the audience and how much they appreciate what we do 00:11:31.760 |
here every week. And so the love that we got people asking to take selfies, people telling 00:11:36.080 |
us what the show meant to us, you know, and people coming from all different stations in life, 00:11:41.280 |
really, it made it not elitist. But it felt like the people who were there, were all 00:11:46.880 |
builders. And that was really an interesting part, what I instructed the team to do was anybody who 00:11:51.440 |
was like a real estate broker, a money manager, a sales executive, a business development person, 00:11:56.320 |
I said, let's not have them there. No offense to those, you know, critical functions, but 00:12:00.640 |
a lot of people will come to the events to sell and get customers. 00:12:03.120 |
But I said, anybody who's a builder and artists, they're making something in the world, let's give 00:12:07.840 |
them the priority for these scholarship tickets. So, you know, when you met people, they were all 00:12:12.000 |
building something interesting in the world. And no press, I think also created a certain 00:12:16.800 |
vibe there. We didn't have the media there, criticizing every panel and, you know, every 00:12:22.480 |
speaker. And so it I think it just Yeah, I made it so great. Well, I think it really couldn't do it 00:12:27.760 |
without all you guys, and Freeburg and the besties and Brad, you were helping behind the scenes. So 00:12:31.840 |
couldn't do without everybody. And my team turned out surprisingly well, I thought. I thought the 00:12:38.880 |
whole thing was a J Cal grift. And it actually turned out there's been there's there's some 00:12:42.080 |
grifting going on for sure. I haven't seen an accounting of exactly where all the money went. So 00:12:46.720 |
it's close. We'll have that accounting any day now, Sachs any day now. 00:12:51.040 |
What could you have done better? What would you change for the next time? 00:12:53.680 |
You know, I just a great question. You know, we always do a document with lessons learned 00:13:00.480 |
right after the event. So I went through my team. And I had 26 people for my team. 00:13:04.720 |
21 from launch, and I think five from insight came and, you know, helped staff the event, 00:13:10.400 |
a little more time to work on the speakers in the agenda. If we had a little more time, 00:13:16.640 |
I would have teased out of each bestie, you know, maybe five or 10 speakers or topics they wanted 00:13:21.360 |
and worked backwards. So it's just a little more time to, to experiment with the format. 00:13:26.400 |
But I took an experimental approach to it. We did have people who did solo dolo like Ted style talks, 00:13:32.000 |
we then had people come on stage with the besties and do discussions. But having all besties on 00:13:37.680 |
stage all the time is a little hard for for everybody. I know David likes to focus on maybe 00:13:42.080 |
a couple of things. Other people like Chamath and I like to be on stage for everything, I think. 00:13:46.560 |
But the format was experimental. And there was a couple of great moments, I think when we 00:13:51.200 |
overlapped folks, so I think Nate Silver overlap with Keith raboi, you and Bill Gurley together, 00:13:57.040 |
Tim Urban, I'm sorry, overlapped with Keith raboi. Those were magical moments, I think. And so I have 00:14:02.480 |
something in my brain about weaving individual talks and data points with the besties and then 00:14:10.320 |
having the next speaker on the stage, the next speaker, and I would have liked to have more time 00:14:16.480 |
my only question is, was the Palmer lucky deal? Was that a plant? Did you plan that? 00:14:23.680 |
I'll tell you the backstory is I you know, I had invited him on this week and starts before 00:14:27.840 |
all in came out. Many times he said fuck you basically, in so many words, I hate Jake out. 00:14:33.200 |
And then when all in came out, he's a fan of this show. I think he's particularly a fan of 00:14:37.280 |
David Sachs is. And I think David knows a lot of the investors, the investor pools, 00:14:42.640 |
I think overlap in a lot of different circles of ours. And, 00:14:46.400 |
I said, Would you like to come to the summit? And I and I basically said to him heartfelt, 00:14:50.960 |
like, Listen, I think the work you're doing to protect the country. Most people in Silicon Valley 00:14:55.680 |
don't believe in building weapons systems. But I kind of am with you on this. So we probably have 00:14:59.520 |
some common ground here. I think the mission of what you're doing is more important than our 00:15:02.880 |
disagreement from, you know, the Hillary Clinton versus Trump days, maybe we could just, you know, 00:15:07.200 |
put that aside and have you speak. And surprisingly, as people were like, Yes, I didn't know 00:15:11.600 |
they were doing yes, because he had a plot to dunk on me. But who cares? You know, like, I don't mind 00:15:16.320 |
On. If I'm wrong about something, or I'm right. It's the whole spirit of this show is to, you know, 00:15:22.000 |
to learn and grow and have great conversations. So with that, maybe we start the show now. 00:15:25.360 |
Let's do it. All right, let's go. Let me Am I still allowed to do intros? Or is it too triggering? 00:15:30.800 |
Because I do have interest for this week. Do it. Say do it. Okay, I got them. Only if they're nice. 00:15:35.760 |
Well, yeah, that's the caveat that I cannot guarantee. But anyway, here we go. Getting 00:15:41.120 |
ready to gallivant across the Italian countryside. He spent 40k at all in summit on 00:15:46.240 |
food and wine. He took 400 selfies in three hours. Those sweaters my lord, they reek of power. The 00:15:51.440 |
dictator himself is back. Chamath Palihapitiya. Welcome back to the show. Thank you, Jason. 00:15:56.240 |
All right, his body looks like he doesn't eat cake. He's got a major stake in snowflake. 00:16:02.400 |
You might have heard him earlier on the week with Bill Gurley. 00:16:05.360 |
He's the crossover fund manager with that BD. Our fifth bestie the audience hangs on every 00:16:11.680 |
word he has to say the dark night of namaste. Welcome back to the program. Brad Gerson. 00:16:18.880 |
If you don't know, then you don't know. You can look that up urban dictionary. 00:16:23.600 |
He's about to turn 50 but he looks like he's 65. After 72 hours in Miami, we're not sure he's still 00:16:30.240 |
alive. The creep reaper is jealous of the facts under his eyes. His portfolio has been down for 00:16:35.280 |
35 straight days. No surprise. The Ray man himself is back. David Sachs. Too rough on 00:16:42.720 |
Is it okay? I felt like I might have gone too rough on sacks. All right. I get it. I get it. I get it. 00:16:46.080 |
I guess we start with markets and S&P 500 down 15% year to date Dow down 11% to stocks of note that 00:16:54.880 |
did particularly well during COVID. Zoom and snowflake reported their earnings this week and 00:16:59.680 |
they beat expectations. Of course, that gives them no reprieve market cap for zoom 31 billion, 00:17:08.800 |
got almost $6 billion in cash, which was a prescient move to cash up I guess during the 00:17:16.000 |
boom times. Their stock jumped 18% after the earnings so great for them. Q1 revenue 2023 00:17:22.960 |
1 billion 12% year over year. They got an 80% gross margin for that business pretty impressive. 00:17:27.760 |
500 million adjusted free cash flow 7000 employees. 00:17:32.800 |
They're at almost 500,000 per employee at this point and stock is still down 43% year to date 00:17:40.240 |
but a little bump here so I guess we might be bumping along the bottoms and just to quickly 00:17:45.920 |
your comments after that snowflake reported their quarterly earnings yesterday. $41 billion market 00:17:51.200 |
cap. They got almost 4 billion in cash. They were down slightly at the taping of this episode today 00:17:57.760 |
and they're down 67% from the peak of $409 a share in November so they're not in the 85% 00:18:03.280 |
plus club like Coinbase and Peloton. But still they've lost two thirds of their 00:18:08.320 |
market cap 422 million in revenue 85% year over year beat their expectations. 00:18:15.840 |
And gross margin 72% net retention 174% 70% growth within within their existing customers to David 00:18:25.680 |
Sachs his point about why SAS is so great. They got 4000 employees 6300 total customers. So I guess 00:18:34.560 |
maybe starting with you Brad since you're in this in the thick of it. Thoughts on I know your major 00:18:39.760 |
snowflake early supporter thoughts on what's happening in the market and maybe any indication 00:18:45.280 |
from these two. Let's face it strong results in the bouncing along the bottom I think is how we'd 00:18:53.040 |
all describe what's happening right now. Well, I think listen, what makes investing hard is 00:18:56.960 |
sometimes you have to hold simultaneous truth. Right and the reality is there's a lot of cognitive 00:19:01.920 |
dissonance when you see something down 30 40 50% but it may be still fair value. Right we were 00:19:07.840 |
talking about last October, like make no mistake about it. Just take snowflake as an example. The 00:19:14.080 |
move from 400 to $420 billion in revenue is a huge step forward. And that's because we're talking about 00:19:15.200 |
a market that's going to be a little bit more competitive. And that's because we're talking about 00:19:15.280 |
a market that's going to be a little bit more competitive. And that's because we're talking about 00:19:15.280 |
a market that's going to be a little bit more competitive. And that's because we're talking about 00:19:15.280 |
to 200 was probably just what I would describe as normalization in a world where rates were going 00:19:22.480 |
back to two and a half or 3%. Right the market last October had gone too high. We discussed it 00:19:29.680 |
on this pod we discussed it on CNBC. And so I expected a return to what we call the five year 00:19:36.000 |
average as we discussed at the summit. What's been surprising to me is the negative reflexivity 00:19:42.240 |
that's kicked in as a result of the war in Ukraine. 00:19:45.120 |
David Collum: Uncertainty about hyperinflation, 00:19:47.520 |
uncertainty about hyper rates. And so now we're seeing software generally, all risk assets, 00:19:53.360 |
growth assets trading now 30 40 50% below the five year average, right? So I don't think it's helpful 00:20:01.360 |
to say well, none of that should have happened. No, the reality is normalization meant that all of 00:20:06.800 |
this stuff was going to be down 20 to 50% because it was way overvalued last fall. We gaslighted 00:20:15.040 |
David Collum: We didn't hedge it perfectly in many respects. 00:20:17.920 |
But that's, you know, that's what happens in late market cycles. So the question is, 00:20:22.640 |
where are we today? And for example, like, why is the NASDAQ up 300 basis points today? 00:20:27.680 |
Right? This it feels like whiplash, I come in one day, and you know, you have market caps up 10% 00:20:33.520 |
one day down 10% the next. And so I think it's really important to help the people listening 00:20:39.440 |
understand, you know, like what happened this week and what's going on. 00:20:44.960 |
kind of a pretty mixed bag this week, in fact, of things going down. Shamath, what are you going to 00:20:52.160 |
take on this of what we're seeing in the market this week, specifically with precipitous drops, 00:20:58.960 |
Shamath Nani: Look, we, we still had some amount of rate 00:21:03.280 |
uncertainty from the Fed. I think people weren't sure how aggressively they were going to hike. 00:21:10.400 |
But by early this week, it was pretty clear, there's going to be 250% 00:21:14.880 |
point hikes, one in June, and one in July, and then effectively a pause, 00:21:20.240 |
because then the Fed funds rate will be at around 2%. And everything from there will probably be 00:21:26.880 |
path and data dependent. Okay, that's effectively what they said. Now, I think the the markets had 00:21:34.320 |
actually already started to see that writing on the wall. So if you go back to you know, 00:21:39.920 |
one of our favorite measures, which is the 10 year break, even it's effectively rolled over, which, 00:21:44.800 |
which meant that, you know, which means that from the highs in sort of late April, 00:21:49.440 |
it started to come down, which says that, you know, they were thinking that, 00:21:53.680 |
you know, the inflation was not going to be as bad in the back half of the year. 00:21:57.840 |
And then the second is that corporate credit, which is really what matters in some ways to 00:22:04.240 |
the Fed, because that's where they can intervene, what is the spread above treasuries that a company 00:22:08.880 |
can issue debt? When it goes crazy, and it goes up, it means oh, no, the cost of capital, 00:22:14.720 |
the capital is going up, that's going to be hard for companies to raise money, they may have to lay 00:22:19.120 |
people off, they may need to get into cost cutting mode, right? That's what goes through everybody's 00:22:22.880 |
mind. But that's also now about 35 and 40 days rolled over, which means that the gap has started 00:22:30.160 |
to shrink, you know, between the US Treasury price, and what you know, decent corporates can 00:22:36.560 |
can issue debt at. So it looks like we are set up for potentially a decent little rally, 00:22:44.640 |
here. The problem is, is it a rally that is sustainable? Or is it a rally that's basically 00:22:51.040 |
what we call a dead cat bounce or a bear market rally, where, you know, you just get some one or 00:22:56.880 |
two weeks of relief before the thing spears down again. And we're not going to know although 00:23:01.440 |
tomorrow on Friday, there's going to be a really important set of inflation data that gets released. 00:23:06.720 |
And I think everybody's going to be sweating these details. So right now we're in a moment of pause. 00:23:14.800 |
if this data comes back as reasonably good, which means prices are, you know, not escalating as much 00:23:20.240 |
as we thought inflation is not going to be as bad growth is going to be moderate, that that gives a 00:23:27.680 |
lot of ammo for the Fed to kind of take their foot off the off the gas here. And in that case, 00:23:32.640 |
markets will go boom, sacks. The interesting note, I think is 00:23:38.640 |
what we talked about here, everything was correcting except housing. And we were wondering 00:23:44.480 |
this, you know, the increasing rates would hit mortgage rates mortgages way above 5% 00:23:50.480 |
in the last two weeks, I think it's come down a little bit. But the mortgage rate 00:23:54.800 |
basically doubled. And then we finally saw it earlier in this week. 00:23:58.960 |
What day was it was two days ago. So we're taping this on Thursday. So I think on Tuesday, 00:24:05.600 |
new home sales 591,000. They expected 749. And I think the last month before that was 763. 00:24:14.960 |
Is that indicative of the raising the rates and slowing down inflation has finally occurred. 00:24:23.840 |
And that went maybe we, the Fed maybe steer too much into the turn? How do you interpret 00:24:29.600 |
that mass? It was a pretty massive miss in terms of home sales in the estimate? 00:24:33.440 |
Well, the costs of buying a home are going way up because home loans are now more expensive. So 00:24:38.800 |
that's going to factor into all sorts of consumer purchases. Anything that's financed can be more 00:24:43.440 |
expensive. You're also seeing companies starting to slow down spending, really starting to slam on 00:24:49.920 |
the brakes we see in startup land startups are all slashing costs right now. But that's eventually 00:24:54.640 |
going to percolate up to big companies to you saw Dara's memo, basically, when he got back from Wall 00:24:59.680 |
Street memory published that a couple of weeks ago saying we sharpen our pencils, cut everything. 00:25:03.840 |
What Wall Street is looking for now is free cash flow. So it seems to me like we're headed into 00:25:11.200 |
a pretty serious downturn or recession here. Yeah, I think that's a pretty serious downturn. And I'm 00:25:13.360 |
going to say that we're headed into a recession here. I mean, I've been saying we're in a 00:25:14.560 |
recession for months. The the the tricky thing for the Fed is that they don't have a lot of good 00:25:22.000 |
options because we have a lot of recession indicators blinking red right now. At the same 00:25:28.080 |
time, inflation is still high. So they're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. I think 00:25:32.560 |
what the Fed should have done is in 2020 hindsight is back last summer, we first got that shock CPI 00:25:41.120 |
print. Remember, it was like 5.1%. And then we got that shock CPI print. And then we got that 00:25:43.280 |
5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got 00:25:43.920 |
that 5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got that 5.1%. And then we got 00:25:44.240 |
to come out of the blue, because for years and years, we've been talking about deflation. 00:25:48.080 |
Nobody thought inflation was a problem. All of a sudden, we got that 5.1% print. They were in total 00:25:53.600 |
denial about it. They just dismissed it saying that inflation was transitory. And Yellen said the 00:25:59.280 |
same thing. And so basically, everyone just ignored the data for six months. And what they 00:26:05.120 |
should have done was stop QE right then and there, they could have taken a little bit of time to 00:26:09.600 |
think out, you know, a rate increase strategy. But they were still basically engaging in QE 00:26:16.880 |
for nine months after that, you know, first inflation warning. 00:26:21.200 |
And if they had stopped QE there, then we wouldn't have had this asset bubble 00:26:25.200 |
in the second half of last year, that's when it inflated the most. And we could have had 00:26:30.960 |
more of a soft landing. Unfortunately, now, they let the they kept inflating. And really, 00:26:38.000 |
until the end of Q1. And then they let the they kept inflating. And really, until the end of Q1, 00:26:40.000 |
and they've yanked away the punch bowl so violently that I think the real economies 00:26:43.840 |
can go into recession. So that's where we are right now. I mean, I don't know what the what 00:26:48.960 |
the right answer is now. Given that we're in this, you know, almost stagflationary position. 00:26:54.400 |
Let's try and answer that, Brad, what is if, if we didn't act soon enough, 00:26:58.560 |
if you agree with Sax's point, pretty hard to disagree with. And we didn't take the 00:27:03.280 |
medicine a little bit at a time. And now maybe we've overreacted, or maybe it's going to get 00:27:09.040 |
worse. What is the right thing for us to be doing now? Because all these companies doing hiring 00:27:14.880 |
freezes layoffs, at the same time that the housing market tanks at the same time crypto tanks at the 00:27:19.440 |
same time the stock market tanks? This feels like a major shock to the system. Is it time to maybe 00:27:26.480 |
reconsider some of these? No, you know, for the Fed to reconsider or just slow and steady wins 00:27:33.520 |
the race here? What's the best option? First, we should erect statues to Senator Manchin, for 00:27:38.960 |
saving the republic by vetoing stimmy to that would have been bill devastating. That would have 00:27:45.520 |
been devastating. So we'll revisit that. Listen, the Fed said two really important things this week. 00:27:50.960 |
They said number one, our communications have been helpful in shifting market expectations. 00:27:58.560 |
What that means the Fed is the air traffic control. 00:28:02.000 |
They said to the markets at the beginning of the year, you're 90 degrees off runway heading. 00:28:08.880 |
Get your ass back on runway heading. It was a slap in the face to markets, and it was a radical 00:28:15.200 |
adjustment. Now you hear the Fed in these little statements this week, they said, Hey, 00:28:20.720 |
we're well positioned this year to assess the effects of policy firming in the back half. So 00:28:26.880 |
they're saying, we're going to hit it with 5050. And then we're going to take a look. So now think 00:28:32.400 |
of it as air traffic control your two degrees to the left your two degrees to the right. They're 00:28:37.440 |
steering us on runway heading. I don't think the Fed wants to do anything at this moment to lose 00:28:42.800 |
credibility in the inflation fight, we're going to get 50, we're going to get another 50. But 00:28:49.200 |
they're doing what they want to do, which is keeping markets sufficiently tight, right? They 00:28:55.040 |
wanted to take the crypto market down. They wanted to take all the excessive risks in the stock 00:29:00.080 |
market down, right? You're absolutely right, the inventory of $350,000 homes spiked from four months 00:29:07.360 |
to nine months, right used car prices are rolling over the last three months, all the things they 00:29:13.520 |
needed to do they're doing, right, they need to stay the course. However, the hyperventilation 00:29:19.760 |
this week by Bill Ackman on Twitter, that the Fed needs to be doing radically more that somehow we 00:29:25.600 |
need to be raising rates to six, seven, 8%. In order to squash inflation, to me seems highly 00:29:32.960 |
misdirected, and totally out of touch with the fact that on layoffs.com/fairfax, we're going to 00:29:37.280 |
get to the bottom of this. I think we're in a we're in a pretty reasonable place here, the real, the 00:29:52.000 |
real question is now, what do you need to take the market lower? And this is more of a nuance. But 00:29:57.040 |
you know, when you look at companies that are now quote unquote, cheap, 00:30:01.440 |
right, let's take an example like you, you know, what we hear a lot about Google 00:30:07.200 |
or Facebook, right? And people will say, my gosh, this is cheap, because if you run a screen on it, 00:30:10.880 |
it's like 1011 12 times price to earnings. Well, the price, you know, because you can look on the 00:30:17.520 |
screen. The real question is, are the earnings right? And the thing that can take the market 00:30:24.080 |
lower is if you actually think earnings are modeled incorrectly. Right. So we saw this week 00:30:30.960 |
as well. Snap. I mean, completely just blew themselves 46% down. 00:30:37.120 |
And for day yesterday, I just want to say something about one day, 00:30:40.320 |
they have the most incredible propensity to self immolate on earnings calls than any other company 00:30:46.720 |
I've ever seen. There's probably been three times no less than three times over the last four years, 00:30:52.160 |
where I don't know whether it's just poorly scripted, or not well rehearsed, or the people 00:31:00.560 |
that are helping Evan get ready for these things. But these are disastrous calls. You know, Facebook, 00:31:07.040 |
I've had a couple in its lifetime, but snap consistently, probably once every 18 months, 00:31:11.920 |
we'll do this. Anyways, the thing just completely implodes, the stock implodes by 48%, or something. 00:31:19.360 |
And then it, you know, rolls over to companies like Facebook and Google, who then are off eight 00:31:23.920 |
or 10%. My point in telling you the story is that if you think Facebook and Google just as an example, 00:31:29.600 |
again, are cheap at 10 times, while you better hope that the earnings are right, 00:31:33.840 |
because the earnings are actually wrong. That's actually 00:31:36.960 |
27 times and 19 times, you know, I'm making these numbers up to give you the example, 00:31:40.880 |
because the earnings are fundamentally wrong. So that's the risk now that's left in the market, 00:31:45.360 |
in my opinion, that could take it much, much lower is if that, you know, all of this slowdown really 00:31:50.400 |
contracts spend, and the earnings are actually not accurate. The forecasted earnings will need 00:31:57.120 |
to be revised over the next two or three quarters. And that's where we will probably see the low. 00:32:06.880 |
as Brad said, it's a really good analogy now just course correct by degrees, you know, a degree here 00:32:12.320 |
degree there. We've probably consolidated the lows. So said another way, we look at a company 00:32:18.960 |
like Snap, or Google, a lot of their expected value has to do with people's ad spend, we now 00:32:26.640 |
see less homes being sold. So maybe people in real estate stop spending less on ads, they're a major 00:32:31.360 |
advertising category, maybe direct to consumer, people are not buying because of supply chain 00:32:36.160 |
issues. This is a major advertising category. Maybe direct to consumer, people are not buying 00:32:36.800 |
because of supply chain issues. This is a major advertising category. Maybe direct to consumer, 00:32:37.040 |
people are not buying because of supply chain issues. This is a major advertising category. 00:32:38.240 |
And we're not going to spend on ads. And so all of this ad revenue, that's some of the first to 00:32:43.520 |
come out of people's budgets. So, you know, even as great as snaps results actually look, they were 00:32:50.560 |
up 38% year over year, they're generating over 100 million in free cash flow, 00:32:55.360 |
the guide was terrible, because what they said was our E, right, our earnings, 00:33:01.200 |
right, are not modeled accurately. Right. And so that's the risk that you now have to take to every 00:33:06.720 |
company, you cannot look at a screen on Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg, look at a price to earnings 00:33:11.920 |
ratio and say, wow, seven times that's so cheap. It may not be seven, you have to do your own work, 00:33:18.080 |
it could actually be much higher than that, because your earnings may be at risk. 00:33:21.040 |
The earnings being at risk is this contagion that we talked about, I don't know, six, maybe 00:33:27.680 |
we're going on almost a year now, sacks, we talked about a contagion happening, because 00:33:31.520 |
we've all experienced it in the last two recessions to the dotcom bust in the Great Recession. 00:33:36.640 |
So what are you seeing in terms of at companies, this contagion risk? Are people canceling SaaS 00:33:42.640 |
contracts on the margins? Obviously, people are doing hiring freezes, obviously, people are laying 00:33:48.160 |
people off? Are people going to start renegotiating salaries? You know, what's the next couple of shoes 00:33:54.880 |
to drop your sacks? And that would signal to you a true bottom here? Like, have you seen, 00:33:59.840 |
I thought maybe one would be if somebody offered somebody an investment with a two or three times 00:34:05.040 |
liquidation preference? Have you seen one of those? 00:34:06.560 |
Yet? Have you seen people say we're going to renegotiate salaries? Because that's when it 00:34:09.840 |
was really dark, right? The last two times? Yeah, no, it's gonna take time to get to that point. I 00:34:15.600 |
mean, where you start seeing structure and deal is in deals is when a founder is trying to preserve 00:34:21.600 |
evaluation they got last year. And that can't really be justified, but they don't want to just 00:34:25.360 |
take the down round. So you try to preserve the optics last round by building all these 00:34:29.680 |
preferential terms. We don't like to do deals that way. But you'll start to see them happen 00:34:34.400 |
later this year, when you know, companies get more and more of these deals. 00:34:36.480 |
More desperate. That's not the first thing that happens, though. I think that that to your point 00:34:41.840 |
about the talent market, it's definitely going to happen. Has it happened yet? No. What has to 00:34:46.640 |
happen is first all these open recs get cancelled companies freeze their hiring plans, then 00:34:51.200 |
eventually they do layoffs that's coming. And then the things are here. Both are here. So what's the 00:34:57.520 |
next in talent wars? Well, yeah, I mean, look, but within the next six months, the talent market 00:35:02.320 |
is not gonna be as hot. And you know, in the same way that startups aren't 00:35:06.400 |
getting 10 term sheets, now that maybe they get one or two, if they're a good company, 00:35:11.120 |
same thing with talent, right? They're not gonna have 10 job offers, they might have one or two. 00:35:14.960 |
And that's gonna create, that's not gonna create the same upward pressure, continuing upward 00:35:19.840 |
pressure for, for increases in comp. To your point about like, will SaaS contracts be cut? I mean, 00:35:27.280 |
I think software is pretty sticky. I mean, if it's a good product, will deal cycles get longer? Yes. 00:35:36.320 |
more mortality risk in the startup or SMB customer basis of companies? Yes. 00:35:43.040 |
I think one concept that startups may want to wrap their heads around is what I would call deferred 00:35:50.560 |
mortality risk, meaning that during the last few years during the boom times, the graduation rate 00:35:55.840 |
from C to series A to series B was very high, perhaps artificially high. So there's a lot of 00:36:00.880 |
companies that got funded in advance to the next round, where in more normal times, they wouldn't 00:36:07.040 |
Now, if those companies haven't really fixed their issues, they've just deferred 00:36:10.960 |
the mortality. So I think all of us probably in SaaS land need to be modeling out higher logo churn 00:36:18.320 |
for, for customer bases that are skewed towards startups or SMBs. And we don't know what those 00:36:25.840 |
numbers are going to be yet. But that is likely to happen. 00:36:28.960 |
I think that that's right. I think the other thing is that 00:36:31.360 |
there, there's a lot of companies that are going to have to get religion on free cash flow conversion. 00:36:36.160 |
ASAP. And I just think that most CEOs to be very blunt, are poorly educated and enumerate. 00:36:44.800 |
So their level of numeracy to even understand this is pretty poor. And most board directors are 00:36:52.560 |
Can you unpack it right now? What does it mean to get the business to free cash flow? What does it 00:36:59.440 |
take? Why is it important? And what are the how do those businesses look differently to spend less? 00:37:06.180 |
Then you make, okay, hold on, I just want to make sure I got it correct. You make money, 00:37:11.780 |
but the number of the money you make is higher than the number of the money you spend. 00:37:15.780 |
Got it. Okay. And then there's a delta there, there's some difference between those two numbers. 00:37:20.820 |
And that number is important to some people is what you're saying. 00:37:22.900 |
I think increasingly getting that number to be greater than zero is going to be really important. 00:37:28.660 |
It, it allows you again, everybody starts to throw out this whole thing, which is, oh, my God, 00:37:35.620 |
you can never slow growth and the company will die. And yeah, maybe in a vacuum that that's true. 00:37:42.100 |
But when every other company is fighting tooth and nail to survive, the only thing that you need to 00:37:47.460 |
do is actually survive by surviving you win. And if you can basically make your cash last as long 00:37:54.180 |
as possible, even if you cut to the bone and stop growing, if you come out the other end, 00:37:59.780 |
and you're the only company that's left, you will win and run over the market, you may have pushed 00:38:04.820 |
to the right a few years, your plans of world dominance, but they're still available to you. 00:38:09.620 |
It's the company that foolishly thinks that they can continue to spend money at the same rate or in 00:38:14.260 |
the same ways that are going to learn this hard lesson. Because I think that investors 00:38:20.340 |
are not going to tolerate being able to, you know, provide incremental capital to organizations 00:38:27.940 |
funds, who are then you know, miss allocating that capital to basically support a poorly marked 00:38:34.740 |
portfolio. And I think that is going to be the real come to Jesus that actually makes all of this 00:38:39.300 |
thing come clean, like pension funds, family offices, endowments, all these organizations 00:38:44.820 |
are smart enough to realize that they're giving good money after bad if what those folks are going 00:38:50.340 |
to do is not demand portfolio rehabilitation, and instead are just going to basically keep the marks 00:38:56.260 |
of their old funds because they're just in a in a game of waiting it out. Where the hope taking 00:39:02.100 |
action, greater than, you know, blind hope and just going, you know, steady doing what you've 00:39:07.620 |
been doing, you got to make some changes. I mean, look, I love Brad's reaction, I think that 00:39:11.300 |
most growth oriented funds are looking at their portfolios. And they're trying to balance two 00:39:18.420 |
strategies. Strategy one is get into massive rehabilitation mode. The problem is, most of 00:39:23.300 |
these people have never built or run a company. So they have no idea how to rehabilitate anything. 00:39:27.620 |
They're, you know, market momentum folks, and in that they were excellent, but in actually 00:39:32.020 |
helping CEOs build and rebuild a business, I think that they're not as well suited doesn't 00:39:36.820 |
mean they can't do it, but they're not as well suited. That's Path A. But I think that path is 00:39:42.180 |
very painful. And it requires you to take medicine, the bitter medicine, which is to basically mark 00:39:47.380 |
your portfolio down 50 or 60%. Just like the public market, terminal valuations have gone down. 00:39:53.060 |
The other alternative is to basically raise enough money 00:39:56.500 |
to do, for example, unpriced converts into those same companies so that 00:40:01.940 |
you don't have to remark so that the auditors will be allowed to carry these fake valuations, 00:40:06.900 |
you can maybe market down 10 or 15%. But you don't have to market down 50 or 60%. And hope 00:40:12.420 |
the market returns to his previous state. But as we've all talked about, that previous state 00:40:19.860 |
is probably unreliable, because it was a moment where we had a global pandemic where we took rates 00:40:24.420 |
to zero. And we printed nine or $10 trillion of excess liquidity that inflated these things. So 00:40:31.860 |
I got to think that, you know, prices in 2019 were a little bit ticking up 2020. We're really ticking 00:40:39.460 |
up 2021 was egregious and 2022 is the come is you know, where it all comes home to roost. 00:40:44.580 |
Brad, explain to us, we hear free cash flow, we hear income, net income, EBITDA, we hear all these 00:40:53.620 |
terms. Now free cash flow is what everybody is focused on. I believe that seems to be the 00:40:59.140 |
predominant rallying cross. I believe that seems to be the predominant rallying cross. 00:41:01.780 |
I think that's a great point. And I think it's a great point. I think it's a great point. And I think 00:41:02.340 |
public market companies now, can you explain to people what the difference between these things 00:41:06.100 |
are? Because people kind of bundle them together? Why would somebody like Dara at Uber, just say, 00:41:11.700 |
Hey, you know, we've been talking about adjusted EBITDA, EBITDA, income, net income, all this stuff. 00:41:15.940 |
But free cash flow is what we want to focus on now? Or is that correct? Yeah, 00:41:19.220 |
you know, and our friend Bill Gurley, rails on this adjusted adjusted. And you know, look to your 00:41:25.940 |
left, look to your right adjusted one more time EBITDA, right? Like in markets like this, what 00:41:31.060 |
people want to know about is, is that the way that we want to see the market? What people want to know 00:41:31.700 |
or what's the green stuff I can take out of the business and put under my mattress, free cash flow, 00:41:37.620 |
distributable free cash flow. And not only that, how much per share? I think the single biggest 00:41:44.500 |
issue growth investors are focused on today is the easy way out for all these companies, they'll tap 00:41:50.340 |
down a little bit on their hiring, they'll tap down on their spend. But out of the back door, they want 00:41:55.540 |
to give a bunch of free stock to employees to help offset that pain. This is really important to 00:42:01.620 |
understand. Because stock is a real expense, right? When a company goes public, the more shares you 00:42:08.020 |
have, the lower your price. So it is a real expense to everybody, the founders, the employees, the 00:42:14.100 |
investors, right? And so what's what I think the single biggest conversation going on in boardrooms 00:42:19.780 |
in Silicon Valley today is, hey, can we have a little bit more stock this year, whether it's 00:42:25.940 |
options or whether it's outright RSUs to give to employees because if we don't give it to employees, 00:42:31.060 |
they tell us, hey, we're going to give you a bunch of free stock. And so we're going to give it to 00:42:31.540 |
they're going to leave this is a real hard truth i had a ceo of an incredible company call me 00:42:37.860 |
and say listen we pay our engineers a million bucks ahead but we give them stock that over 00:42:44.020 |
the last five years has been worth another million dollars each year so they built their lives as 00:42:50.260 |
though they had two million dollars a year in income they bought a house they bought cars they 00:42:55.460 |
sent their kids to private schools based upon that two million dollars and now when we tell them 00:43:01.220 |
that this upcoming year the mill we're not making whole on that million it can't be when when we win 00:43:07.380 |
you win and when we when we lose you win so the tough conversation is we're not re-upping you 00:43:13.300 |
because the stock's been cut in half and so now that engineer's saying yeah but this year that 00:43:18.820 |
means i'm only getting paid 1.2 million and the answer the tough answer is yes right shared 00:43:26.180 |
sacrifice you should have never assumed that that was going to be worth an incremental million 00:43:30.900 |
dollars a year but that takes leadership that takes courage that takes a board that knows what 00:43:35.860 |
they're doing to explain that over the full arc of that employment and the first thing the mercenary 00:43:41.940 |
employee says is well i'll just go work somewhere else and the right answer for a good leader is okay 00:43:48.580 |
if that's your approach to this business then you need to go work somewhere else i mean you just did 00:43:54.260 |
a great test right that's a great filter you you uh you're a mercenary and you know you were with 00:43:59.700 |
us when we're up but you're not working somewhere else that's a great filter you you're a mercenary 00:44:00.580 |
you're not with us when we have to take some austerity measures is this the end of entitlement 00:44:05.540 |
across the board sax i mean we had an entitlement class everybody thought they could raise a vc fund 00:44:10.100 |
everybody thought they would have 100 irr because they would just buy nfts and flip crypto projects 00:44:14.820 |
that had no released product and the same with employees they just thought i can just keep you 00:44:20.740 |
know raising my salary x amount and now it looks like apple said everybody comes back to work three 00:44:26.340 |
days a week and we don't see a lot of people quitting apple because there may not be another 00:44:30.260 |
option and maybe a lot of the firings that are occurring i'm thinking of cameo here had top three 00:44:36.340 |
of their top like six or seven leaders leave i interpreted that as maybe they had really big comp 00:44:42.580 |
packages and when they did the layoffs they said you know what the number twos in these positions 00:44:46.740 |
can get the job done for a third of the price maybe that's better for the business so is this 00:44:52.820 |
the end of austerity the end of entitlement i think so or a lot of it there's a great article 00:44:58.260 |
here uh in well that was that came out recently about netflix where netflix they're finally 00:45:04.020 |
getting real about their kind of entitled their woke entitled employee problem and this is in the 00:45:10.740 |
new york post but there's many other newspapers that covered it basically it says here netflix 00:45:15.860 |
tells woke workers to quit if they're offended if you find it hard to support our content breath 00:45:20.660 |
netflix may not be the best place for you said the memo so period full stop yeah they're just sick of 00:45:26.580 |
it they're just not going to put up with it anymore they're sick of being held hostage by 00:45:29.940 |
their employees who think that they can kind of muscle the leaders of the company by starting a 00:45:35.540 |
petition or boycott campaign every time they want to drive the company in a certain direction and so 00:45:40.340 |
i think companies are finally figuring out this is the only way to react to basically being held 00:45:45.300 |
hostage if you don't like it quit if you don't have seven eight job offers you know and recruiters 00:45:51.060 |
calling you constantly because everybody's on the hiring freeze well then maybe people will appreciate 00:45:56.100 |
the contract of i work for you you give me money and then everything else is superfluous on that 00:46:01.540 |
note did anybody see the ricky gervais netflix special yet if not netflix it's on netflix it's 00:46:09.140 |
unbelievable i mean dave chappelle you know in terms of bravery ricky gervais was like i've already 00:46:16.740 |
made my money i'm burning the whole building down i mean he went full equal opportunist and i mean i think 00:46:25.620 |
the trans issue became like 10 or 20 percent of the of his latest special so it does seem like 00:46:32.020 |
the comedians are saying you know what we're going to make jokes we're going to make jokes about 00:46:35.620 |
everybody we're not going to buy into this you can't cancel us we're just going to keep making 00:46:39.860 |
jokes and we're going to keep making money and and that whole concept that you know people are 00:46:44.660 |
going to be held hostage i think is over independent of what you think of making jokes of 00:46:49.220 |
you know various marginalized or smaller groups of people okay can we please go back to something 00:46:55.140 |
brad said a while back about how mansion saved the democratic party because i think there's actually 00:47:00.180 |
an interesting point there yeah yeah such notorious right-wingers as jeff bezos have 00:47:04.980 |
said something very similar lately when uh do you see that where biden tried biden tried to blame 00:47:10.740 |
billionaires for the inflation and bezos was having none of it he said no listen it's not 00:47:15.380 |
because of us or our companies because you printed too much money and joe biden or he 00:47:20.500 |
said mansion saved you from yourself because it would have been another four trillion of 00:47:24.740 |
of spending on top of all the other trillions of spending that we had last year so it's absolutely 00:47:30.260 |
the case that that if the administration was left just to own devices remember they were touting 00:47:34.740 |
back in december they were touting the idea that this four trillion of buildback better spending 00:47:39.700 |
would somehow be the cure to inflation imagine if they had poured that gasoline onto the fire i mean 00:47:44.340 |
we would go to 20 inflation we might have had a currency uh you know like a serious currency issue 00:47:50.420 |
no chamath but but i mean hold on but let me just finish the points i don't want to just make a 00:47:53.780 |
partisan point here i'm going to go to the next question and then we'll get to the next question 00:47:54.180 |
point here i want to there's there's a serious economics point here with or learning i hope our 00:47:58.740 |
policy makers learn from this which is what happened over the last couple of years we had 00:48:03.460 |
10 trillion dollars of money printing right why did they do that they thought that they could 00:48:08.820 |
stimulate our way out of this covid recession that they had induced with lockdowns in any event the 00:48:14.500 |
point is they thought they could stimulate economic activity by printing money and maybe cynically 00:48:19.300 |
politically they thought it'd be good for them in the midterms what actually happened that 10 trillion 00:48:23.700 |
goes into the economy but there's no corresponding increase in the output of goods and services 00:48:29.380 |
so two things happen first price levels rise and we get inflation and second we get an asset bubble 00:48:34.900 |
in the stock market and then the way both those things sort of come crashing down to earth is the 00:48:40.420 |
fed looks at this inflation and suddenly has to jack up interest rates that pops the asset bubble 00:48:46.020 |
it vaporizes something like 14 percent of global wealth and then simultaneously 00:48:50.340 |
workers feel a lot poorer because their wages haven't kept up with inflation 00:48:53.220 |
so this whole idea that you can just print money as a way to create wealth and prosperity 00:48:58.100 |
i hope what we take away from this i think recession that we're going into is that is not 00:49:03.060 |
a viable strategy the only thing that creates wealth in a society is the output of goods and 00:49:08.180 |
services that people want and you just can't try to sort of play games with that by creating phantom 00:49:15.780 |
this sort of phantom money that doesn't represent a real increase in good services or productivity 00:49:22.740 |
yeah it's hard for people not to take this all as partisan but if you just look at the objective 00:49:27.860 |
facts the last two administrations have printed money like drunken sellers and it's a mess right 00:49:33.140 |
now so you you can divorce yourself from any conception that this is partisan trump spent a 00:49:38.820 |
ton of money and so did uh biden and who's more qualified than trump and biden elon bezos the 00:49:45.540 |
people who appear on this podcast we have much more of a pulse on what's happening in the actual 00:49:50.980 |
real economy and in entrepreneurship and in the real world and so i think that's a good point 00:49:52.260 |
i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a 00:49:53.540 |
good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point 00:49:54.500 |
and i love the fact that now you know bezos is a poster he just doesn't get he doesn't care 00:50:00.660 |
and i think we're having like an honest discussion now right one of the one of the areas where 00:50:05.780 |
i i don't think elon gets enough credit is when he explains macroeconomics i think he actually 00:50:11.060 |
really understands the the what an economy is i mean an economy is basically a trading system 00:50:18.020 |
for the production of goods and services if you were to go this is a point he's made if 00:50:22.020 |
you were to go to a desert island and somebody just gives you a billion dollars when you're 00:50:27.220 |
sitting there on that island you can't buy anything it doesn't make you wealthier what 00:50:31.460 |
makes you wealthier is the production of goods and services that people want and that's ultimately 00:50:35.860 |
what an economy is money is just the accounting system the dollars is the accounting system if you 00:50:41.140 |
start printing lots of money all you're doing is debasing the accounting system it doesn't make 00:50:44.580 |
anyone richer and yet you know the way that conversations around economics really take place 00:50:51.380 |
the only thing you ever hear about is stimulating demand you never really hear anything about 00:50:55.780 |
production and i mean this is an old debate that goes back to the 1980s about you know supply-side 00:51:00.820 |
economics but regardless of what you call it wealth ultimately comes from our capacity to 00:51:07.300 |
produce goods and services that people want it's a great point chamath all this adds up to companies 00:51:12.820 |
and the government's balance sheet becoming tighter and more efficient so the talent diffusion across 00:51:20.900 |
the industry is going to be a huge factor in the development of the economy and the development of 00:51:21.140 |
the industry perhaps everybody being entitled and getting overpaid people not wanting to go to work 00:51:26.500 |
people who have jobs not wanting to go to the office all of this seems to have 00:51:30.180 |
actually reversed in three months so this medicine we're taking we stopped eating the bad food we 00:51:37.540 |
started working out we're getting better sleep this is going to turn around for the the companies 00:51:42.820 |
that take the medicine the management teams the capital allocators who do the hard work 00:51:46.580 |
and sharpen their pencils as we've talked about this will all result in a more efficient 00:51:51.620 |
and vibrant economy yes i think for the most part i think there's still going to continue to be 00:51:57.060 |
examples of folks who basically run themselves into a brick wall because they don't want to 00:52:01.860 |
make the hard decisions that is going to be more exaggerated in silicon valley because 00:52:06.980 |
we have a culture of tolerance and we have an economic business model that supports 00:52:13.060 |
kind of irresponsible decision making and supports poor governance you know look i've said this many 00:52:20.420 |
times but a fund's job ultimately is to make a very important decision about whether they truly 00:52:27.540 |
care about generating massive returns or whether the fee income becomes so meaningful so as to 00:52:35.220 |
drown out every other incentive that they have and i think by and large in silicon valley if you track 00:52:41.300 |
all of the increased frequency and fundraising you can also probably follow those dollars and 00:52:50.180 |
they generally will be the most poorly run they'll be held the least accountable 00:52:56.180 |
and i think those will have the largest negative outcomes and then instead if you follow the 00:53:03.940 |
dollars of the the real practitioners who have discipline they look kind of sheepish and silly 00:53:11.140 |
for years in the middle of a rally but they're the ones that are able to really reset 00:53:15.860 |
and help some of these few companies really win and i think that you're going to go through that 00:53:20.900 |
cycle over the next four or five years and so you know i think it's super well said because 00:53:27.460 |
i have felt at where i've been made to feel silly by some folks who said why are you asking to do 00:53:33.220 |
diligence why do you want to have a board seat why do you want to talk to customers 00:53:37.140 |
why are you asking for month-by-month revenue you made a sub-economic decision like the idea 00:53:42.180 |
that over the last four or five years you optimized for anything except the market beta 00:53:46.580 |
was kind of dumb you know and it's and and the worst thing that you could have done in that 00:53:51.620 |
period was confuse alpha and beta meaning alpha is what you are able to do because of your discrete 00:53:58.500 |
skill versus anybody else beta is when just the market goes up said differently you could take 00:54:06.660 |
any nba player and put them on a high school basketball team 00:54:11.940 |
and they would be the you know college player of the year any single one okay that's beta 00:54:17.620 |
yeah if you then can be the mvp of the nba that's alpha yeah okay and i think that a lot of folks um 00:54:26.500 |
were made to feel very silly or you know a downer or a wet blanket um in these last few years who 00:54:34.420 |
will probably have the last laugh it's been unbelievable brad to watch the changing of attitudes 00:54:41.700 |
and the entitlement in fundraising and private markets in the last 60 days and it's been even 00:54:48.100 |
more pronounced in the last 30. i literally have people we talked to last month who had 00:54:52.820 |
really crazy expectations they've come down by 50 they wanted 50 now they're at 25. they didn't want 00:54:59.060 |
board seats now they're okay with board seats information rights they were fighting against 00:55:03.300 |
information rights i don't know why that's a hill to die on now they're like information rights 00:55:07.460 |
yeah sure here's our cfo's email we need to get money in the doors but they're not going to get 00:55:11.460 |
money in the doors so um i guess what's the silver lining here it does seem to me as a great setup 00:55:16.180 |
right now wait jason let me ask you a question hold on yeah like or to brad like and then you're 00:55:20.900 |
forgetting one other key thing in in the in the race to raise all of this money what did these 00:55:26.580 |
folks do they hired these mid-level kids as partners into their venture firms and gave 00:55:32.740 |
them money to put into companies what do these people know no mentoring i'm not saying it 00:55:37.780 |
disparagingly i'm just like what do they know how do they know how to actually invest in the business 00:55:41.220 |
invest investing is just not you see it you just say okay well i think it sounds cool you know 00:55:46.740 |
there are some of those uh younger folks who are going to turn out to be all-stars in there 00:55:52.100 |
just like in the nba and they're going to be some that you know prove to be right in the 00:55:55.460 |
beta but let me answer jason's question because you know maybe end on a on a note of uh optimism 00:56:01.060 |
you know in some countries you know notably china right now they're doing 00:56:06.500 |
a lot to prop up a bunch of companies that should be allowed to fail right one of the 00:56:10.980 |
beautiful things about free market capitalism the creative destruction the cycle time on creative 00:56:16.500 |
destruction in this country has never been faster right make no mistake about it if you took money 00:56:23.620 |
at a valuation over a billion dollars okay last year you're not that's not a venture capital bet 00:56:31.940 |
i call it quasi public right you stepped into the bigs and you said i will deliver this plan 00:56:39.060 |
and if you don't deliver the plan there's not going to be a lot of tolerance 00:56:44.260 |
there's not going to be tolerance for just giving away a bunch of more stock there's not going to be 00:56:48.900 |
tolerance for no course correction right maybe in seed or series a right there's a lot of tolerance 00:56:55.620 |
because you sign up to a lot of unpredictability but the level of tolerance that you'll see out of 00:57:01.460 |
late stage growth investors is going to be akin to what they do with a public company 00:57:07.380 |
that runs them off a cliff you know how that is you've been on those earning calls 00:57:11.220 |
so i think this is going to shine a light on the bifurcation that we really have we call all of 00:57:18.500 |
this venture capital but the truth of the matter is series c and before is venture once you're 00:57:25.700 |
stepping into the bigs and taking money at a billion two billions the expectations are different 00:57:30.980 |
your access to capital will be different um the expected course correction will be different 00:57:36.660 |
right but i take it as a um i take it as a sign of strength that we're going to work through this 00:57:42.820 |
we're going to have you know the the private markets are absolutely going to go through a reset 00:57:48.020 |
but we'll get through it and the winners will win and those who fail to course correct and 00:57:51.460 |
want to fly into the wall will do that and we'll get on with the next generation of incredible 00:57:56.180 |
entrepreneurs solving big problems the secular curve of technology 00:58:00.500 |
is the only way to get through it and the cycles that overlay that secular curve are not suspended 00:58:06.180 |
we have not suspended wars we have not suspended economic cycles and so we're going to have to get 00:58:10.900 |
through this one it's happening in record pace actually that's an interesting point i want to 00:58:15.700 |
let me ask about a question about that which is what's the potential here for more of like a v 00:58:21.380 |
shaped recession where to your point the market's correct more rapidly and violently than ever and 00:58:27.140 |
it's not going to be a recession it's going to be a recession and it's going to be a recession 00:58:30.020 |
and it's going to be a recession and it's going to be a recession and it's going to be a recession 00:58:30.900 |
snap misses a you know issues a new forecast down 40 percent um is there a possibility that 00:58:38.420 |
this thing gets resolved in say six months that's not to say that uh valuation levels 00:58:43.460 |
are ever back to where they were you know in the second half of 2021 but in six months could 00:58:48.820 |
we have sort of done this big reset washed out a lot of the problems and um you know again 00:58:55.220 |
valuations are not back but the market becomes the the capital markets become unfrozen 00:58:59.540 |
and we're back to a more normal operating environment as opposed to say yeah as opposed 00:59:05.460 |
to say like more of a u where we're kind of bouncing around the bottoms here in this volatile 00:59:11.060 |
state for about 18 months um you know and then it's more like the dot-com crash we come out of it 00:59:16.820 |
in two years i see smart people on both sides of this i hear jason lemkin's been saying i think this 00:59:21.700 |
is kind of short deep sweet six month reset fred wilson just wrote 18 months at least i think sequoia 00:59:29.220 |
two years i mean i think our instinct is 18 months to two years but what do you think the 00:59:34.660 |
possibility is that we could be in a more normal environment in six months right so let's let's 00:59:39.700 |
separate public markets and venture markets because venture markets as you know have a six to 00:59:44.020 |
12 month lag just in terms of the reset but i would say you know the future is a distribution 00:59:49.620 |
of probable outcomes there's a downside case an upside case in a base case 00:59:53.700 |
i think the base cases by this fall will have very good evidence right of 00:59:58.580 |
where inflation's rolling over i think it is rolling over what the fed is likely to do the 01:00:03.220 |
upward bound on on interest rates and i think we'll be at a point where we can start underwriting to 01:00:08.900 |
the five-year average again make no mistake about it the s p and the nasdaq today are still 30 above 01:00:17.700 |
where they were in january of 2020 30 above where they were in january 2020 how much better is the 01:00:26.340 |
world today than where it was in the past year and i think we're going to see a lot of growth in the 01:00:26.900 |
world today than where it was in the past year and i think we're going to see a lot of growth in the 01:00:28.100 |
where it was in january 2020 well i think what the market is saying is that we've grown the 01:00:33.620 |
economy on a nominal basis about 15 percent during that time and earnings have about doubled right 01:00:40.820 |
the earnings margins of those companies are about have about doubled so you would expect 01:00:44.580 |
normal course and trajectory maybe that those companies would be 30 percent more valuable the 01:00:50.180 |
problem is as we look ahead to chamath's point the earnings are likely to come down profit margins are 01:00:57.620 |
being squeezed so i think there's a decent decent argument there's more pain to come in the public 01:01:02.580 |
markets that we haven't seen the bottom however i do think that the fed is taking a good course here 01:01:08.180 |
i don't think that we have runaway inflation i think that um you know we're going to have an 01:01:13.220 |
investable environment come this fall however i think for venture there's a six to a 12-month lag 01:01:19.940 |
to that so i think you got to add it to those six months to really get to the market clearing prices 01:01:25.780 |
for all these companies but i think it's incumbent upon all of us to give really good feedback today 01:01:31.620 |
and i see a lot of it right to entrepreneurs about making that course correction if they're only 01:01:37.220 |
turning the plane 10 degrees when they see lightning dead ahead they're making a huge mistake 01:01:43.060 |
the default action by every founder today should be a 90 degree course correction unless 01:01:49.780 |
they have very good idiosyncratic reason in that business in terms of their output 01:01:55.300 |
in terms of their outperformance to stay the course plan for the worst hope for the best yeah 01:02:01.700 |
and you could even bifurcate the companies in private markets to ones that have strong product 01:02:08.260 |
market fit and the ones that don't there's a lot of companies to david's point that we're getting 01:02:12.900 |
series b's without product market fit you know it's one thing to get your series a when you have 01:02:17.620 |
this like weak product market fit and a great story but when you start seeing series b's 01:02:22.260 |
happening on momentum it's like that to me is a very good thing to see that's a good thing to see 01:02:24.820 |
that's a good thing to see that's a good thing to do so i think that's a great thing to do and i think 01:02:26.740 |
that's a great thing to do and i think that to me is is is going to be impossible to resolve that 01:02:31.460 |
company has to go to zero or has to reset or give even give money back to founders those are really 01:02:35.860 |
the three things i would see as a true bottom like the really dark moment where people have two or 01:02:41.220 |
three liquidation preferences people reset reset comp and tell people listen we're going to cut 01:02:45.860 |
comp 30 across the board for management if you don't like it leave um and then finally people 01:02:51.940 |
saying you know what we're going to give the 60 cents on the dollar back to investors those are 01:02:54.340 |
the two down terms you're saying something that i think is also important that's not 01:02:57.940 |
really talked about which is that there's going to be a lot of really good companies 01:03:00.900 |
with really horrible capital structures really terrible cap tables really bad valuations really 01:03:07.620 |
big overhangs of preference stock that are going to have to get worked out and 01:03:12.420 |
in getting that worked out going back to what brad said the person that course corrects 90 degrees 01:03:18.500 |
will win and the reason they'll win may not even because they're being that courageous 01:03:23.860 |
they're just being less stupid than everybody else quite honestly because you have to remember 01:03:27.860 |
in most of these markets over the last four or five years we funded four or five versions of 01:03:32.980 |
every imaginable company right and there's going to be two winners 70 and 30 percent yeah and and 01:03:38.980 |
there's really only going to be one winner and then there's going to be a marginal second kind 01:03:43.380 |
of also ran that captures some value and everybody else is not that valuable and 01:03:48.500 |
you know that's roughly been true but the reason we were able to support that was that every company 01:03:53.380 |
looked kind of interesting anyone with traction um could be you know competed against because the 01:03:58.900 |
only differentiator at the time was very cheap money that was effectively free and it was flowing 01:04:03.300 |
in you know faster than you could count so all of that has to get sorted out so i just think that 01:04:09.700 |
that those dynamics shouldn't be ignored and so you know again hard work too i mean to the thing 01:04:15.060 |
we've been saying here it's hard work for a board and founders to do this but what choice do you have 01:04:19.460 |
well the problem is the problem if you take much more sophisticated markets like the market market 01:04:22.900 |
markets like the debt markets which i would say are much more sophisticated okay cutthroat liquid 01:04:28.420 |
covenants when you see the people that make the money two things are true number one is 01:04:34.740 |
they're incredibly sharp elbowed and number two is they make money in moments like this 01:04:38.740 |
right if you look at apollo's great returns or blackstone's great returns or cerebras 01:04:43.220 |
you know these folks were the you know they they really were the barbarians at the gates 01:04:47.460 |
and they made all the money in moments of true dislocation if you apply 01:04:52.420 |
that construct here you know we've never had to go through a period where there are some real terms 01:04:59.060 |
and conditions attached to the incremental dollar um and i think that if that does come to pass in 01:05:04.660 |
silicon valley you're just going to have a reckoning and i think that that what it'll 01:05:08.660 |
really do is just sort out the winners and the losers and it'll sort out the folks that were 01:05:13.620 |
able to get to default or close to default alive or at least default life support saxon investable 01:05:21.940 |
um i mean sax made a great tweet he basically said it's not default alive or dead 01:05:25.940 |
investable or not and that's an even finer filter well default default alive is fantastic if you can 01:05:32.740 |
get there basically just means cash flow positive i mean all default alive means is that you're 01:05:36.660 |
cash flow positive or you're going to be cash flow positive based on the money you have in the 01:05:39.940 |
you don't need money yeah exactly you don't need money well of course that's the best 01:05:42.980 |
place to be is you don't need money but i think you know for early stage companies that's 01:05:47.540 |
almost an impossible standard you know it takes time to get to the point of being cash flow 01:05:51.460 |
positive so therefore i was trying to propose a standard that i thought was more actionable for 01:05:56.660 |
founders because it was because it wasn't impossible and i call it default investable which 01:06:01.540 |
is here are the metrics that you need at least i can tell you what they are in the sas world you 01:06:06.660 |
know here's what great metrics look like here's what good metrics look like here's some danger zone 01:06:10.900 |
metrics and you need you know out of the five key metrics you really need three or four great ones 01:06:15.700 |
and one or two good ones to raise in this environment and no dangerous metrics and if you don't 01:06:20.980 |
have those you need to give yourself the time to fix the problems in your business to get to those 01:06:25.780 |
metrics um on that note you know sequoia had a really good chart called survival the quickest 01:06:31.860 |
that illustrates this concept of giving yourself time and i threw it in the chat but basically what 01:06:37.940 |
it shows is there's a green line and an orange line the the green line is the company that 01:06:43.300 |
realizes in may of 2022 that we've gone into a very different environment and they slash their 01:06:49.460 |
burn in half and they're going to have to go back and do it again and they're going to have to go back 01:06:50.500 |
and do it again and they're going to have to go back and do it again and they basically double 01:06:52.260 |
their runway and then there's the other company that just keeps going along the same path they 01:06:56.420 |
were at until they realize oh wait a second you know and then you know some point in the future 01:07:01.860 |
they realize there's been a change they make a small cut they make another small cut and they're 01:07:05.860 |
always behind the eight ball and i've seen this so many times before that the company doesn't make 01:07:11.380 |
cuts until they're forced to and so they never really lengthen their runway and then when they 01:07:16.100 |
finally do make the cuts they go into a death spiral and die and now they're over the atlantic 01:07:20.020 |
and there's not enough fuel to get to a landing strip and you just plunge into the cold ocean and 01:07:25.540 |
die founders really have to think about the the asymmetry of the risks that they face right which 01:07:30.820 |
is let's say that you cut too much and the environment is better than you think it's 01:07:36.500 |
going to be well you can always hire back i promise you a lower price in all likelihood 01:07:40.180 |
i promise you you'll be able to hire back okay but on the other hand if you don't cut 01:07:44.100 |
enough and the situation is worse than you think then you just die so you this is why 01:07:49.540 |
andy gross said only the paranoid survive you've got to think about the downside risk and be more 01:07:55.300 |
skewed towards the bad scenario than sort of the the sort of wishful thinking scenario hey 01:08:01.540 |
david just just one final point here you know because we have all these decks flying around 01:08:07.620 |
now by venture capitalists telling founders to go make these really tough decisions being a little 01:08:14.180 |
self-reflective where were we all six months ago 01:08:19.060 |
where were we in october when we were putting more money in and they were hiring like crazy 01:08:24.900 |
where were we in november right i remember some of the conversations that we were having 01:08:29.620 |
but i look i posted in in chat layoffs.fyi right the number one company on that list gets here 01:08:37.940 |
sequoia company okay are they making a course correction you bet your ass they are they're 01:08:43.540 |
laying a 4 500 people 15 of the workforce and they're making a course correction 01:08:49.060 |
the second company on that list lacework an altimeter software company that's doing 01:08:53.380 |
terrific growing hundreds of percent laying off 300 people 20 right a 90 degrees turn of the plane 01:09:01.940 |
right that company will never need cash again but it's not just flying toward the lightning 01:09:07.220 |
they're making the tough decisions because that's what leaders do in businesses that are even good 01:09:12.340 |
businesses there are a lot of companies that are businesses that should be on this list but 01:09:17.300 |
they're bumbling along the way they're not they're not making money they're making money they're not 01:09:17.860 |
bumbling along and not making the tough decisions we need venture capitalists that instead of 01:09:23.780 |
you know this being a popularity contest venture capitalists need to look inside as well and say 01:09:29.460 |
what about our firm didn't didn't work right why weren't we issuing these course corrections and 01:09:37.140 |
telling people to tap the brakes a little bit when we knew markets were overheated last year 01:09:41.700 |
right and so i think this there's a lot of responsibility that sits on both sides of the table 01:09:47.380 |
um but i'm you know there's 714 startups on this list by the time we're done there are going to be 01:09:53.060 |
at least 3 000 startups on that i was about to say at a zero at a zero that's another reason 01:09:58.180 |
i say the fed is getting what it wants right this labor market is 01:10:02.100 |
you know is cooling down very quickly at least in silicon valley well i mean and the fact that 01:10:06.820 |
people felt like they didn't need to take a job and they could live off credit and there would 01:10:10.820 |
always be jobs for them i think people are going to have to rethink like can i be fun ployed forever 01:10:16.420 |
and you know do i need to take my career seriously do i need to pay down my debt do i need to have a 01:10:21.140 |
balanced uh balance sheet do i need to my personal balance sheet needs to be in order as well i think 01:10:27.140 |
that's what individual workers need to think about yeah i mean brad's right that there's certainly 01:10:32.740 |
enough blame to go around in the ecosystem and you know vc's bought into these frothy evaluation 01:10:38.260 |
levels last year um to some degree we were all by by the fed and these low interest rate policies i 01:10:44.740 |
wrote my post about burn multiple and how to measure capital efficiency two years ago 01:10:48.420 |
um it's getting a lot more retweets now than it did back then but uh but look do vcs have some 01:10:55.220 |
self-reflecting to do definitely but you know i'm seeing a lot of tweets going around basically 01:10:59.540 |
saying like people objecting to this advice on the grounds you'll hear something like if you vcs 01:11:07.620 |
wanted us to operate more efficiently then you should have invested more efficiently or if you 01:11:13.220 |
wanted us to be disciplined you should have been more disciplined in your investing and to me 01:11:17.540 |
that's kind of missing the point it's kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face the 01:11:21.140 |
reason we're giving this advice is because we just want our companies to survive and we've been 01:11:26.340 |
we don't want a zero we don't want a zero we've been through multiple down cycles and the truth 01:11:30.740 |
of matter is unless you've been in the business world for over 14 years you've never been through 01:11:35.620 |
a down cycle i mean that means that you know no founder under the age of what like 36 has even seen 01:11:43.380 |
a down cycle before they don't know what it can be like when you go into a two-year nuclear 01:11:48.420 |
probably they probably weren't the pilots at that time anyway so it's more like people who are 40 45 01:11:53.220 |
have the scar tissue because they were in the pilot seat totally totally so the reason you're 01:11:56.980 |
hearing all these vcs all of a sudden say get more disciplined is is mainly because we've seen this 01:12:02.420 |
movie before and we don't want our companies to run out of money and die i think you can say if 01:12:12.900 |
random peanut gallery ceos tweeting their disdain on twitter if you're right that would be a great 01:12:18.660 |
index index down fixing stuff just write that company to zero yeah just turn your twitter 01:12:24.500 |
out and just sharpen your pencils um i i we we would be remiss if we didn't talk about uh at 01:12:30.100 |
least for this last segment about the tragedy in uvalde uvalde texas uh 80 miles west of san antonio 01:12:39.220 |
on tuesday 19 elementary kids in twitter and we're gonna talk about that in the next segment but i'm 01:12:40.980 |
gonna end this video here and i'm gonna wrap up this episode and i'll see you in the next one bye bye 01:12:41.860 |
two adults were murdered um how are we gonna talk about this without losing our 01:12:47.220 |
it's really hard i think maybe the roadmap i did give this a lot of thought it was like why 01:12:52.500 |
why is this first segment on the market trundling along on life support for an hour and 01:12:57.060 |
10 minutes and i think part of it is because none of us can really talk about this without losing 01:13:00.900 |
our cool it's really hard and but i do think we did good work chamath i i was thinking about the 01:13:05.860 |
good work we did in the episode of roe v wade and we actually came to a point where we said 01:13:10.900 |
you know here are the extreme positions and then you're like hey wait a second i found this data 01:13:14.980 |
point i found this data point and we actually figured out hey 80 of people want this definition 01:13:21.060 |
of abortion in the united states so i i'll throw it to you chamath you know we're all outraged 01:13:26.900 |
we're all frustrated but maybe we could start there is there a consensus of what could be 01:13:32.100 |
accomplished here that you've come to i've started to think about it a whole bunch but you know 01:13:37.220 |
we're all outraged we could all yell and scream here but 01:13:40.580 |
we're all outraged we could all yell and scream here but a path forward is where my mind goes 01:13:43.220 |
i'll just tell you what i what i um have been thinking about 01:13:47.220 |
okay this is just a random stream of consciousness let's do it 01:13:51.620 |
i think that the democrats will not make any progress because 01:13:59.860 |
they try to make this unfortunately uh a moral virtue signaling issue the republicans will not 01:14:10.340 |
because they become sort of very binary adamant um absolutists about constitutional rights and the 01:14:17.220 |
interpretation of that right in a very specific way um the truth is in the middle you know if you 01:14:23.860 |
go back before we talk about uvalde um peyton jondron who was the kid that shot up a tops 01:14:29.860 |
supermarket in buffalo and killed umpteen you know black shoppers 01:14:39.300 |
lived in a state where there was a red flag law for those that don't understand what red flag 01:14:44.980 |
laws are david you know tweeted some stuff about it as well but 01:14:48.420 |
essentially it allows a community member or a family member or a school 01:14:52.100 |
teacher or a police officer to essentially put a restraining order around an individual that they 01:14:58.900 |
think could cause harm and use that as a way to confiscate their weapons people have talked about 01:15:04.580 |
red flag laws as being possible while he lived in a state the kid was you know put under a psych hold 01:15:10.100 |
you know a year ago and it it all just falls through the cracks now you know ted cruz or 01:15:16.740 |
somebody else said let's spend 10 billion dollars and only have one door into a school and put an 01:15:21.940 |
armed guard there well then you find out that uvalde you know doubled their security spend 01:15:28.260 |
over the last two or three years they actually had a person that may or may not have just kind of like 01:15:34.420 |
stepped to the side or something to let them in the police according to the uh ap showed up and 01:15:41.060 |
stood around for 40 minutes before they were able to actually breach the school you know so much so 01:15:46.100 |
that the quote in the ap article was that there was a parent that tried to get other parents to 01:15:50.740 |
for 40 minutes they were standing there you know in california you have you know very restrictive 01:15:58.420 |
measures um but we've had you know in san bernardino and other places we've had mass shootings 01:16:03.620 |
here as well because the police are not there to protect the school they're not there to protect the 01:16:04.400 |
guns can just get transported across state lines and there's there's no real way to stop this 01:16:08.080 |
the nra i find out just so if you guys are interested uh mitt romney took 13.6 million 01:16:16.320 |
dollars from the nra this is the moral finger wagger of the republican side who you know last 01:16:23.360 |
time i checked is a multi-centi millionaire but somehow still needs to take 13 million dollars 01:16:28.000 |
from these folks rich burr took 7 million roy blunt 4.5 million tom tillis 4.4 million 01:16:34.320 |
cory gardner 4 million marco rubio 3.3 million there's no effective counter lobby that says 01:16:41.440 |
how about we have a more moderate and restrained pro-gun set of rights and field candidates on the 01:16:48.480 |
left and the right that could jason find this middle ground and so you know we're in this two 01:16:54.720 |
or three day period it seems like where folks will get extreme and then nothing will happen 01:17:04.400 |
agree as well if you look at the underlying family situation of all of these mass shooters 01:17:10.720 |
there is a really disturbing theme that i think is worth putting out there 01:17:14.640 |
these are all universally young men 18 19 odd years old 01:17:19.920 |
they come from broken families this individual salvator ramos 01:17:26.240 |
um father was absent uh again according to the times in the wall street journal article i read 01:17:33.360 |
intermittent drug use issues, lived with the grandmother. 01:17:36.720 |
They're unemployed, barely graduated, if graduated at all 01:17:41.440 |
They harbored these deep resentments towards women or 01:17:45.940 |
They then project a lot of their frustration. 01:17:49.080 |
They were bullied potentially in high school growing up, and 01:17:53.600 |
all of the, they were posting all kinds of very challenging 01:17:58.280 |
You know, apparently this kid had a one TikTok of where he 01:18:04.720 |
You know, he would post on Instagram of assault rifles, and 01:18:10.360 |
So I just think that we have to acknowledge that there's a 01:18:17.340 |
And at this point, I think they should all be replaced, writ 01:18:27.560 |
But then also, like, parents have to do something. 01:18:32.000 |
Incrementally more from the perspective of the community, 01:18:35.540 |
because these kids are going to school with our kids. 01:18:41.880 |
And I said, I said, Brad, I said to my kids, when you interact 01:18:45.320 |
with your friends, I just want you to understand when you're 01:18:47.240 |
on social media, and you encounter this content. 01:18:49.120 |
I hope you're never like either scared or embarrassed or unsure 01:18:54.380 |
enough to just show somebody when this stuff is happening, so 01:18:58.000 |
that you can let somebody with a little bit more maturity and 01:19:00.240 |
judgment, try to figure out what to do, if anything.