back to indexE29: Coinbase goes public, direct listings vs. IPOs, unions & more with Bestie Guestie Brad Gerstner
Chapters
0:0 Bestie intro & crowning a new SPAC king
3:1 Coinbase's direct listing, comparing vehicles to go public & lockup periods, Sacks on Coinbase vs. NYT
12:6 David Sacks on running for governor
15:21 Brad & the besties react to the crazy Q1 in the markets, a16z's savvy buying moves with Coinbase, issues with short-term behavioral lock-in
32:37 Top insights from Bezos' letter to shareholders, Amazon employees reject the union in Alabama
50:27 Reacting to Drew Holden's recent thread on media double standards in covering each party
54:28 Federalism's benefits throughout COVID, State-by-state results reveal lockdowns didn't work, vaccine incentives and PR due to J&J decision
64:20 Degradation of faith in institutions accelerated by COVID
69:26 Republican Senator Josh Hawley calls for big tech antitrust reform, bypassing institutions for progress
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any word from the dictator or should we just do uh i don't know man i gotta i i cannot spend my 00:00:05.440 |
whole day sitting on zoom waiting for tomorrow or i could have brad gerson come on and sit in for 00:00:09.040 |
isn't he richer than chamath he is now the largest back in the world should we do that should i just 00:00:13.200 |
have brad come on the pod oh my god yes start it now get him on started later come on come in later 00:00:22.160 |
he's like what the we're like we replaced you with the new spat king oh my god oh my god get 00:00:26.320 |
him on is this like uh a kidnapping and you guys are going to take me out and drop me out behind uh 00:00:31.840 |
behind the railroad cars what's going on okay good here we go i'm good is it how's the game 00:00:49.440 |
and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy 00:00:55.760 |
hey everybody hey everybody it's another episode of the all-in podcast we took last week off 00:01:05.360 |
because it was spring break and we all needed a break hope you had a great one too with us today 00:01:10.000 |
of course the queen of quinoa from an undisclosed sunny location david friedberg it looks like the 00:01:17.040 |
rain man city is it redwood city a rain man himself david sacks ready for governorsax.com 00:01:25.600 |
spax brad gerstner is with us again the new dictator uh filling in for chamath polyhapitiya 00:01:31.920 |
the dictator oh wait chamath polyhapitiya the dictator is here as well and special bestie 00:01:42.080 |
i don't know what that means but we're editing that out of the show 00:01:48.720 |
that's a bunch of beeps uh but welcome brad sitting in uh just for a moment here because chamath was 00:01:55.040 |
blow us off he was a no-show we needed a spacking sorry guys 00:02:00.240 |
emergency it's just it's just a little flattery for chamath the truth of the matter is 00:02:07.120 |
chamath uh chamath is pioneering here and uh you know i think um uh 00:02:13.760 |
it's been incredible to watch the competition and choice and as chamath knows i participated 00:02:19.360 |
in a couple of the deals that he's done um and i think we all share the same feeling which is 00:02:24.960 |
that you know there's been a uh a system that is pretty byzantine that wasn't serving the founders 00:02:32.400 |
who we all uh you know care deeply about and so i'm just i'm thrilled whether it's direct list 00:02:38.960 |
like roblox did a few weeks ago that we we helped do and you know or whether it's chamath and the 00:02:44.320 |
incredible innovation that he's helping to do or you know we're lucky we've been we've invested 00:02:50.320 |
you know building a capital markets business on top of this uh this business uh you know we're 00:02:50.960 |
you know we're lucky we've been we've invested you know building a capital markets business on top of 00:02:53.280 |
this uh this back and and and then you know worked with uh grab to bring a great public 00:02:59.280 |
company out this week so let's get to the direct listing uh good segue clearly the biggest news of 00:03:06.400 |
the week is coinbase the largest direct listing ever uh bill gurley somewhere is smiling 00:03:11.360 |
and that's on top of roblox which i think was the second biggest 00:03:15.840 |
uh 2020 revenue 1.2 billion sorry brad did did snowflake direct list or that was a traditional no 00:03:22.640 |
that's traditional ipa traditional ipa i don't know who got their bet week their wet their beaks on 00:03:28.320 |
this one sax did you have a little bit i had a little tasty poo a little tasty poo i had uh 00:03:34.720 |
i had a lot showered upon me uh explain boys because you're because you're in ribbit right 00:03:41.280 |
i am i was mickey's one of mickey's largest lps yeah who's mickey for the audience who doesn't 00:03:45.520 |
mickey malka who runs uh ribbit capital who owns seven percent um or ten percent or seven or eight 00:03:51.520 |
percent of coinbase and what was incredible was i got distributed all of it yesterday which by the 00:03:57.680 |
way i think for a direct listing the strategy to me makes a lot of sense i made a mistake 00:04:03.040 |
in hindsight if i think about my distribution strategy because myself excel and andreessen 00:04:07.280 |
when we did the slack direct listing we distributed probably five 00:04:11.680 |
ten percent and then we waited and then we trickled it out over time but by definition 00:04:16.480 |
i think the price action on direct listings shows you that you top tick the top price 00:04:20.400 |
at the moment on the open print and so you know if you're going to sell you're probably better 00:04:26.480 |
off selling absolutely right away and if you look at the price action on direct listings it's 00:04:30.240 |
basically been one way direction down from the point of the direct listing spotify did that for 00:04:35.680 |
two years it kind of languished you know slack did that until the salesforce acquisition um so 00:04:41.440 |
in general i think if a direct listing happens when you get distributed the stock you should 00:04:46.000 |
probably sell it right away and that uh means it was probably a little bit more expensive than the 00:04:46.400 |
price action on direct listings but it's basically been one way direction down from the point of the 00:04:46.480 |
direct listing spotify did that for two years it kind of languished you know slack did that until the 00:04:46.560 |
salesforce acquisition um so in general i think if if a direct listing happens when you get distributed 00:04:46.560 |
the stock you should probably sell it right away and that uh means it was probably a little bit more expensive 00:04:46.640 |
right away and that uh means it was priced correctly as opposed to underpriced is that 00:04:53.200 |
what we should take from that well no because there's no price that's what's what's tbd is what 00:04:58.320 |
is the morale hit to the company to see a one-way direction down in you know a stairway down on the 00:05:04.080 |
stock price so maybe it was good for selling shareholders it's not necessarily good for the 00:05:07.840 |
morale of employees which then could impact the long-term enterprise value that's being built at 00:05:12.160 |
a company so i think there's a bunch of tbds i do think that direct listings are administratively 00:05:16.560 |
clean in some ways but company building may not necessarily win but you had a point of view i 00:05:23.760 |
think it was last year or two years ago about how you know and i read some papers that one of the 00:05:28.560 |
analysts at wall street put out showing that um there isn't much of a benefit to lockups with 00:05:34.160 |
respect to short or long-term uh price volatility do you still hold that point of view like i think 00:05:40.320 |
lockups are i think lockups are really unfair because they they're they're attacks on the people 00:05:45.600 |
that have been there the longest and they're not going to be there for a long time and they're not 00:05:46.160 |
going to be there for a long time and they're not going to be there for a long time and they're not 00:05:46.480 |
going to be there for a long time and they're not going to be there for a long time and they're not 00:05:46.540 |
longest, which are the employees. So, the idea that somebody that comes in at the absolute 00:05:51.700 |
last minute, Brad and I have done a bunch of IPOs recently where like you get allocations 00:05:57.160 |
in a book. He and I had nothing to do with companies but we get it shares and we sell 00:06:01.020 |
it day one. Then there are people that have been in that company for 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years 00:06:05.840 |
who sit around twiddling their thumbs, watching all these other people generate one-day returns. 00:06:12.460 |
There was a tweet that Bill Gurley had yesterday that says, "There's a well-known crossover 00:06:16.340 |
fund that over the last year has printed a billion dollars of one-day share gains." Well, 00:06:22.600 |
that's crazy. So, I think that lockups are kind of a regressive tax on the people that 00:06:28.080 |
do the work and they are just rewarding people that have nothing to do with companies. 00:06:31.820 |
Brad, what do you do in Grab because you locked yourself up, right, for a couple years? Is 00:06:37.360 |
there a lockup for the existing shareholders in Grab? 00:06:39.660 |
Yeah. So, first, I totally agree with Chamath. 00:06:42.940 |
Lockups are one of the most insidious things, I think, about the traditional IPO process. 00:06:46.940 |
The fact that DoorDash employees are sitting there watching the stock go from 100 to 200 and then 00:06:52.740 |
all these other folks are selling while they'll watch the stock go from 200 back to 100, 00:06:57.940 |
I would think it's incredibly demoralizing. Here's the thing, it doesn't need to exist. 00:07:02.900 |
In Roblox, there was no lockup. The employees were free to sell, but guess what? A lot of them 00:07:08.300 |
chose not to sell, right? It's fairer and quicker. 00:07:12.220 |
It's a quicker price discovery when you actually allow the supply and demand to exist in balance. 00:07:17.840 |
So, what we did at Grab was we fought hard for the most open unlocked, right, day one we could 00:07:26.080 |
possibly get. In that case, there are a lot of big shareholders who are on the board. So, they're 00:07:31.040 |
deemed affiliates under Section 16 of the security law. So, they can't sell, right? They're deemed 00:07:36.080 |
to be insiders, right? But we, at the end of the day, all employees can sell. There is a 00:07:42.000 |
group of senior management that said, "Hey, we want to voluntarily lock. It's a signal to the market." 00:07:46.960 |
But all other employees in the company can sell. So, there are over 5,000 employees in the company. 00:07:51.760 |
And all of the early shareholders can sell on day one. And I think this was the first time I've 00:07:58.960 |
seen this in this alternative IPO. So, we have almost a third of the entire share base of the 00:08:06.480 |
company that is available for sale on day one. Incredible. Hey, Brad, can I ask one more question? 00:08:11.780 |
Yeah. So, the economics for Grab, are they better under your structure than they would have been for 00:08:19.060 |
a traditional IPO to get the same amount of capital and they're paying 7% to the underwriting banks? 00:08:23.140 |
You know, as we all know, you know, Bill Gurley has laboriously pointed out and documented that 00:08:31.540 |
there are two expenses to a traditional IPO, right? There's the upfront fee, five and a half, 00:08:36.260 |
6%, whatever they're paying on the amount of capital raised. But he would argue the much bigger 00:08:41.560 |
expense, right, is the indirect cost of the structural underpricing. 00:08:46.400 |
Right. So, in a traditional IPO, let's say you have a $10 billion enterprise value raising $1 billion. 00:08:51.340 |
If it's being underpriced, he would argue structurally by 40%. We can all debate that, 00:08:55.660 |
but that's $400 million of dilution to employees and to existing shareholders. 00:09:00.740 |
I think everybody in the Grab process, both the buy side portfolio managers from Fidelity, Janus, T. Rowe, etc. 00:09:11.340 |
as well as the company believe that we got a 20 to 30% higher price than a bank would have got 00:09:18.520 |
because of the conviction the portfolio's managers had as a result of the significant investment we 00:09:24.840 |
were making in the company, as a result of the fact that we were locking up our promote shares, 00:09:29.240 |
our sponsor shares for three years. And so, if you say it's 30% on a $4 billion raise, 00:09:35.480 |
that's over a billion dollars of savings, right? Over a billion dollars of indirect cost savings to 00:09:41.120 |
the employees and the shareholders. And for me, our North Star is founders. And so, we literally 00:09:49.120 |
have deconstructed the IPO at every step of the value chain. And to say, like Rich Barton, my 00:09:55.120 |
thought partner in this, he's on the board of Netflix when it went public, took Zillow public, 00:09:59.440 |
took Expedia public. And he said, "We can make this better at every step of the value chain." 00:10:04.320 |
And so, we've thought about it like a product and we build in a capital markets business that says, 00:10:08.560 |
part of it is eliminating the value chain. Right. 00:10:10.900 |
Part of it is eliminating the commission. Part of it is getting a fairer price. But part of it is 00:10:14.660 |
curating that day one cap table, right? Because these companies are stepping into the public 00:10:20.020 |
markets. And as Rich has said and others have said, think about all the curation that goes into 00:10:25.940 |
a private cap table. Now, when you go public, Rich calls it a cap table randomization event, 00:10:32.820 |
right? You lose total control over your cap table, right? Whereas in the case of Grab, we hand-selected 00:10:40.660 |
what we think are the world's best public market shareholders to be their day one cap table. 00:10:44.660 |
So, it's a very different outcome. And it's not just about cost savings. It's not just about 00:10:49.620 |
trying to get a fairer price. It's actually making the process better at each step of the value chain. 00:10:54.820 |
All right. So, we were talking about Coinbase last year when they had a big brouhaha 00:10:59.460 |
and Brian Armstrong said, "We are not going to talk about politics inside the company. 00:11:03.940 |
You can have political views, but not inside the company." 00:11:07.460 |
So, actually did some tweets about this. What are your thoughts? 00:11:09.860 |
Yeah. I mean, apparently, Coinbase's ban on politics in the workplace and their refusal 00:11:20.820 |
to submit to New York Times interviews did not prevent them from creating an $85 billion company. 00:11:25.460 |
You know, I'm shocked, shocked that they were able to do that. That's basically what I tweeted. And 00:11:31.700 |
just shows that founders can do things their own way. They don't have to submit to the woke mob. 00:11:38.980 |
And that's basically what I tweeted. And then, you know, of course, 00:11:41.380 |
well, the first, it's been interesting to see the reactions. The first day, 00:11:45.380 |
I got like 10,000 likes. And then the second day, it seemed like some sort of SOS went out. 00:11:50.580 |
And now I've been sort of surrounded. There's been this like outcry. And my takeaway is that 00:11:56.100 |
the woke mob really doesn't like to be called out as a woke mob. And they're sort of surrounding me 00:12:02.900 |
with pitchforks now saying, "How dare you call us a mob?" 00:12:07.240 |
Are you running for governor? Because it looks like you've taken Botox. Did you take Botox? 00:12:15.760 |
What is going on with your cheeks and your face? 00:12:17.280 |
Lace-a-mots, lace-a-mots on the Botox. Your lips, your lips are incredibly swollen. I mean, 00:12:24.880 |
Sorry. I've got a new lens. I've got five different technologies, making me, slimming me here. 00:12:30.480 |
But you do have your pin on today. And you do look very gubernatorial. And I noticed that you bought- 00:12:35.600 |
I'm wearing my Miami pin. This is my city of Miami pin. 00:12:50.440 |
Yeah. Tell us, governorsax.com. What do you got on deck? 00:12:53.720 |
There's nothing. This is adjacent construction. I don't want to get the- 00:12:57.880 |
Do we have an exploratory committee set up yet? 00:13:01.080 |
Let's get Sax out of the game. I need that deal flow. 00:13:04.280 |
I mean, guys, guys, obviously, if this comes to pass, we're going to rewrite history as David 00:13:08.520 |
Sax was our Manchurian candidate. You know, I floated the trial balloon. There was a layup 00:13:13.400 |
for David Sax to come and alley-oop and dunk on Gavin Newsom. 00:13:20.520 |
I tell you, Newsom is doing everything in his power to blow this recall. Because, I mean, 00:13:26.040 |
timing is working in his favor. I mean, he's done a horrible job on everything vaccine related, 00:13:30.600 |
but the reality is COVID is winding down. It's going to be over. 00:13:33.720 |
So even though he delayed everyone getting the vaccine by weeks, if not months- 00:13:39.960 |
Probably, yeah, by months. We've got 7 million unused doses sitting on the shelf in California 00:13:44.680 |
because of all of his crazy eligibility requirements. Despite all of that, by the time 00:13:48.920 |
we actually get around to the recall, which will be in about five or six months, the recall election, 00:13:53.880 |
you know, the economy is going to be booming again. COVID is going to be over. People will 00:13:58.280 |
probably forget. But for the fact that he is now saying that he cannot- 00:14:03.720 |
The fact that he is now saying that he cannot guarantee that schools will reopen in the fall. 00:14:05.880 |
So we now have schools reopen in, you know, every public schools reopen, basically, in every other 00:14:12.440 |
state. You now have private schools are all reopened in California. And he still cannot 00:14:17.480 |
guarantee that schools will be reopened, not now, but in the fall. 00:14:23.480 |
Make the guarantee that if, Governor, you will open all the public schools, when they open in 00:14:32.040 |
This is the window, David. Now, I'm not saying- This is the window, David. Now, I'm not saying- 00:14:33.520 |
David, now or never. I'm not saying that I'm running, 00:14:36.840 |
but one thing I would say is that whoever does- No, but what about if you ran? How about if you ran? 00:14:41.400 |
If I ran, I would 100% absolutely guarantee that school was open in the fall. What we need is a 00:14:47.880 |
governor who will go to the teachers unions and say, "Listen, you will either report for your 00:14:53.640 |
duty the first day of school, five days a week, no exceptions, or you go look for another career." 00:15:19.360 |
Can we go back to the markets just for one second? 00:15:24.160 |
Because I just want to ask a couple of questions. Brad, Q1 was nuts. Let's get some color commentary 00:15:30.560 |
from a big player in the capital markets, you. 00:15:33.120 |
Talk to us through what factor rotation was. Talk to us about your reactions to 00:15:47.320 |
What does the rest of the year look like? What's your sentiment? How are you feeling? Just give us 00:15:55.480 |
And the gut check, Brad, on weren't you the biggest shareholder in United at some point? 00:16:00.360 |
Oh, yeah. That was a bad way to start off. 2000. 00:16:04.560 |
It was a bad way to start off 2020. However, I would say that it ended up being the best year 00:16:09.440 |
in the history of the firm. And so we, like everybody else, had to reinvent a lot of things 00:16:14.640 |
about our business last year. And we learned a lot from that moment. And the courage that a lot of 00:16:20.960 |
people at United showed through that period of time, without a lot of help, a lot of people think 00:16:26.400 |
the government was helpful. There's a lot of unhelpful things that were being done. But 00:16:29.920 |
notwithstanding that fact, to Chumash's point, 00:16:32.720 |
Chumash, I think I went on CNBC in November and just said, like, when we normalize, there's no 00:16:39.160 |
reason that the 10 year shouldn't be back at the level it was in January 20. Right. And for every 00:16:44.760 |
1% move in the 10 year, you've got a 10 to a 20% drawdown in growth multiples. And the reason for 00:16:51.560 |
that is very simple. They're long duration assets, you discounted back at a higher rate. And so you 00:16:55.960 |
have multiple compression. And so we were starting at an all time high in terms of growth equity 00:17:01.080 |
multiples for both software and internet. And so we were starting at an all time high in terms of 00:17:02.520 |
growth equity multiples for both software and internet. When you look at October, November of 00:17:05.040 |
last year, we've seen about 30 to 40% retracement, or, you know, give back in terms of those 00:17:13.680 |
multiples, right? In some names, it's bigger, and sometimes sometimes it's less, I suspect that 00:17:19.280 |
there's another 10 to 20% to go, right, for a 10 year that's going to be sitting here at 180. I just 00:17:26.640 |
got done talking as part of this roadshow, as you know, to all the biggest growth equity portfolio 00:17:31.440 |
managers on the on the podcast. And I think that's a really important part of the conversation. 00:17:32.320 |
So I think that's a really important part of the conversation. And I think that's a really important 00:17:32.820 |
part of the conversation. And I think that's a really important part of the conversation. 00:17:33.580 |
I can tell you, they're all D leveraging growth, they are not adding, they're not looking to add 00:17:38.180 |
dollars to growth. And these are the biggest managers in the world. And so we're not through 00:17:43.140 |
that process. There are some people who have anchored themselves to the fact that zoom was 00:17:47.180 |
just at 500. They're like, Oh, my God, it's going straight back to 500. You're like, No, 500 was the 00:17:51.980 |
outlier event. That was the all time high multiple event, it will get there in the fullness of time, 00:17:57.340 |
but it's going to have to get there through earnings. 00:17:58.780 |
So what do you think then happens in the privates 00:18:02.120 |
and you know, there's a lot of talk about certain firms, some of your competitors in the growth 00:18:07.400 |
stage side ripping capital into companies every 24 hours or 48 hours? Where Where does that then 00:18:13.760 |
normalize? Because aren't we setting up a dynamic where if you have a bunch of growth firms pricing 00:18:19.640 |
crazy rounds, whose valuations can then will not be able to be held up in the public markets? Aren't 00:18:26.480 |
we creating a different kind of problem? Well, you know, you and I've watched this dynamic 00:18:31.920 |
play out probably four or five times over the course of the last 15 years where there's this 00:18:36.480 |
inversion, private capital markets, private markets are actually overvalued relative to 00:18:41.460 |
public markets. I just look at a few IPOs this week, or over the last couple weeks deliveroo 00:18:45.900 |
hot private company down 30% in the IPO app love and came out this week 20% down in the IPO, 00:18:52.260 |
right at the end of the day, the great day, you know, as Munger likes to say, 00:18:56.580 |
you know, the markets are a voting machine and the public markets are a brutal voting machine. 00:19:01.720 |
And so you know, it just is going to take remember when Groupon got done that last private round at 00:19:07.240 |
20 billion, and then about nine months later, trading at 5 billion or Zynga. I mean, you and 00:19:12.160 |
I go through this, we've watched this, you know, so it just takes the smackdown and people losing 00:19:18.160 |
actual money. And however, so that's the one side, right? This is a temporary dynamic markets will 00:19:24.820 |
clear. I think it is possible you reference, you know, a good friend of mine, you know, 00:19:31.520 |
you know, who's supposedly writing a term sheet every two days. You know, at Tiger, the truth of 00:19:38.420 |
the matter is you can hop you can hold simultaneous troops, you can believe the next three months that 00:19:43.520 |
we're likely to have more multiple compression in the public markets, right? You could hedge your 00:19:48.320 |
public book in a variety of ways against that, like like we did, and announced last last December. 00:19:53.900 |
And at the same time, you can believe that the secular trend in technology has never been more 00:19:59.780 |
potent. Right? And I believe that the secular trend in technology has never been more potent. Right? And 00:20:01.320 |
I believe that if you own an index of the top 30% of technology companies in the world today, 00:20:06.120 |
and you're willing to hold them for five to 10 years, you will be incredibly well rewarded. The 00:20:11.220 |
most asymmetric bet maybe in the history of all of investing is having a golden ticket to have access 00:20:18.780 |
to the best technology companies in the world today. It's it's like unfair play. And everybody 00:20:24.540 |
on this call is playing in what is a highly asymmetric and unfair game stacked in our favor. 00:20:30.600 |
Now, we can see that in the world today. And I think that's a good thing. And I think that's a good thing. 00:20:31.120 |
We can screw that up by trying to think we're good at short term trading or doing a bunch of other 00:20:35.440 |
stuff, we can get individual things wrong. But if you bet on the top, the top quartile of technology 00:20:40.540 |
companies on a global basis, like tiger and others are doing, and you have time on your side, you're 00:20:46.540 |
going to be well rewarded. We talked about the mid market late stage, venture space being a no man's 00:20:55.960 |
land of vortex, the value being created in the late stage and value being created in the early stage, but 00:21:00.920 |
the money in the middle becoming a commodity, because of tiger code to and others coming in 00:21:04.940 |
and just coming over the top. Do you subscribe to that? Brad, do you think that's just a financial 00:21:09.980 |
transaction in the middle and not a lot of value to be made there? Or do you think? 00:21:13.100 |
You know, listen, it doesn't matter in snowflake, whether you invested in the $100 million round, 00:21:18.920 |
the $200 million round, the $500 million round, the billion dollar round where Sequoia came in, 00:21:23.840 |
you know, if the company is going to two, three $400 billion, right, all of those are extraordinary, 00:21:30.720 |
extraordinary returns. So altimeter is described itself often as a lifecycle investor, right? I 00:21:36.420 |
represent the biggest portion of the capital in the firm, some long term endowments are number two 00:21:42.120 |
and number three. And we have a multi decade view on the world. And our view is the one that I just 00:21:45.900 |
articulated, I want to have maximum dollars, I don't care that it's all in the B or the C or the 00:21:51.060 |
D or the IPO, or you know, I want to have maximum dollars behind our best ideas. And I want to be 00:21:56.820 |
an incredible partner to these companies, as they move through the lifecycle. 00:22:00.520 |
And part of the reason we build a capital markets business to help founders in a better way step into 00:22:06.400 |
the public markets is it's part of our mission, right? Like I want to, you know, how frustrating 00:22:11.920 |
it was to me, Jason, to be pre mark or pre IPO and Mongo or Twilio or Okta. And then when it came to 00:22:18.640 |
the IPO, I have to go to the banks and grovel, right and grovel for an allocation and they dribble 00:22:24.520 |
five or 10 million and I see them handing big, you know, big allocations to people who I know are 00:22:30.320 |
going to flip it. And I actually want to own this stuff. It's very frustrating. And so we think 00:22:35.060 |
there's a better way. And when those companies come public in the future, 00:22:37.820 |
you said something which I want to use as a question to Friedberg and sacks and Jason, 00:22:44.120 |
because these guys are involved very sense in one way in what I'm going to say, which is you said 00:22:48.320 |
gross tonnage of dollars. One of the most incredible things that I thought about the 00:22:53.540 |
coinbase s one was the amount of unbelievably 00:23:00.120 |
smart buying that Andreessen did. And I thought to myself, Andreessen just out Sequoia Sequoia. 00:23:06.000 |
And what do you guys think about sort of how they've been able to, to actually execute? It 00:23:13.560 |
just seems like Andreessen is done an incredible, incredible job. I don't want to I mean, Jason, 00:23:19.740 |
you're close to Sequoia. So are you free, Brooke, I just want you to react to that. 00:23:23.640 |
No, you got to get you got to give them credit on coinbase because I think they made the they made 00:23:29.920 |
I guess, ribbit and Gary Tannen initialized may have made the highest ROI because they invested 00:23:38.680 |
My return, my return and ribbit was the Maya from iconic told me was 506 times. 00:23:44.920 |
Right, exactly. So so so ribbit made the 500x. And I guess Andreessen, but Andreessen made like 00:23:51.940 |
20 billion of returns, of which you know, they're probably getting 25 30%. So they made the most 00:23:59.200 |
money may not have been the highest IRR, but it was the most money. And you're right, they doubled 00:24:04.900 |
down in this like 2018 2019 period, it sounded like they were doing a bunch of secondary buying. 00:24:10.060 |
They were buying the stock at 25 bucks. Yeah, they bought it all from Fred Wilson in Union Square. 00:24:14.980 |
Right? Yeah, they were just, they did what socket did with Twitter, right and with Uber and started 00:24:21.760 |
buying. But they did it but they did it at a time where people were losing faith in crypto. There 00:24:26.860 |
was like, you remember, there's like this bit. 00:24:29.840 |
Yeah, there was a big crypto boom. And like, I'd say December of 2017, January 2018. And then it 00:24:35.360 |
kind of collapsed. And that, you know, mirrors the price of Bitcoin, you had Bitcoin reached 00:24:38.900 |
a peak of about 20,000 that crashed all the way down to four to three or 4000. Obviously, 00:24:43.820 |
that was a great time to buy Bitcoin. But it sounds like these guys were also buying Coinbase 00:24:48.440 |
at that time. So that was a pretty that was a remarkable double. 00:24:52.100 |
By the way, it's a good validation of Brad's point about you know, market perturbations being fairly 00:24:58.800 |
good value creation over the long run. And you know, if you have faith that this is where value 00:25:03.660 |
will be created over a period of 10 plus years, you know, you're when you have an opportunity to 00:25:10.200 |
buy in buy in and don't let the market perturbations drive your decision making, or else you end up in 00:25:15.060 |
this market trading trap. Yeah, I think we've talked about this a lot. Warren Buffett talks 00:25:19.740 |
about it a lot. I think Chamath you've made the point about not timing the markets, but your time 00:25:24.540 |
in the markets and this notion that when you have conviction in a business or an idea or a thesis, 00:25:28.600 |
you know, you can continue to double down on that conviction, regardless of whether you think 00:25:33.700 |
relative valuations are appropriate or, or kind of disjointed at the time, it's even more acute. 00:25:38.740 |
Because what happens is we make short term decisions. And then those short term decisions 00:25:43.660 |
oftentimes to prove to be right in the short term. And let me give you an example. Right, 00:25:47.980 |
exactly. And then it leads to behavioral lock in. Right. So at the end of 2014, 00:25:52.360 |
bitcoins at $1,100 a share, we get I get very interested in crypto, I think this is one of 00:25:58.400 |
the most asymmetric bets I see in the world, right? I think it's a low probability event. But 00:26:03.680 |
if you win, the size of the prize is absolutely gigantic. Right. So we're looking at a deal with 00:26:09.920 |
Andreessen, because I thought Balaji was one of the smartest people in the space. The company 00:26:15.020 |
was called 21.co idea of mining for Bitcoin on a chip. On the eve of the deal. My partner and I, 00:26:22.580 |
I said, You know what, I believe that we should place our bet in Bitcoin. 00:26:28.200 |
Because I'm not sure whether or not this mining company is actually going to work out. Okay, 00:26:32.760 |
so we pass on the deal. Crypto Bitcoin goes from 1200 to 300 in like a straight line down. And what 00:26:40.920 |
was my takeaway? My takeaway is like, man, I'm so smart. I'm so smart. We passed on that deal. Okay, 00:26:47.760 |
rather than being curious, rather than learning more, rather than developing it. And what 00:26:53.460 |
Andreessen did during that period of time is they stuck to their belief, 00:26:58.000 |
that this could be a highly asymmetric outcome. Ultimately, I ran into Katie 00:27:02.800 |
Hahn, a board member at Coinbase the night of the IPO. And she said, Brad, you know, 00:27:07.960 |
do you remember, you know, 21.co? I was like, yeah, she goes, those were some of our original 00:27:13.960 |
shares in Coinbase. We sold that company to Coinbase. Wow. Right. And, you know, it's just 00:27:21.460 |
for me, I sent this note to our team, because I said, you know what, guys, in the face of having 00:27:26.080 |
some good wins, I want to remind you, you know, we're going to be able to get a lot of money out 00:27:27.800 |
you of some really potent near near wins and misses and my mistake at that point in time was 00:27:35.320 |
i lacked mental flexibility i got locked in to this idea that i was really smart by having miss21.co 00:27:42.680 |
rather than learning from that moment and saying listen when i started to see it move and then it 00:27:47.800 |
moved pretty quickly and i was like oh i missed it it's just like a stock we do the same thing 00:27:52.760 |
the reality is you should allocate to things that you think are thematically 00:27:57.160 |
highly s asymmetric and great ideas and and this was one of them and one we missed 00:28:02.040 |
can i just kind of add something to that i was in 21 it was 21.6 i don't remember getting any 00:28:07.960 |
coinbase shares so i need to i need to all right so somebody somebody you did not own the prefer 00:28:13.720 |
i did own preferred i invested you did not clear the press stack 00:28:22.440 |
the wrong series one thing i'll add to that is you have to 00:28:26.520 |
look at the mandate of these funds if you're an early stage fund and you have the ability to sell 00:28:31.720 |
at 500x or a thousand x or two thousand x sometimes you've got to lock that in and give something to 00:28:37.960 |
your lps and i think this is where you know thinking full life cycle you said chamath like 00:28:42.280 |
what did you learn from all this well if you're building a business right well i mean one of the 00:28:46.680 |
things i learned is i didn't even know what prorata really was when i started my career 00:28:50.280 |
i didn't do prorata in uber or anything and now my position is i am 00:28:55.800 |
going super prorata in our winners so not only holding winners i'm trying to get to 10 15 00:29:01.640 |
ownership in these companies and it's starting to happen you know with companies that are worth 500 00:29:06.520 |
or 700 million and so that that is the economic that's the change in behavior i'm doing which is 00:29:11.320 |
you know to your point if you bought snowflake at any time you feel great about it 00:29:16.040 |
but then you have to have buy-in from your lps that they agree with that and that they're okay 00:29:20.280 |
with you taking a longer strategy and then at some point you want to return capital and that becomes to 00:29:25.640 |
be super problematic you're in seven eight nine ten of your fund you want to take some chips off 00:29:30.200 |
the table and so what i'm going to do now is i think i'm going to try to do both where i have 00:29:35.800 |
a group of lps who want to buy shares and i don't know how to figure this out and maybe somebody 00:29:41.240 |
could advise me here because i have had other venture firms who had this challenge where the 00:29:47.240 |
growth i don't want anything you own well no no i know that 00:29:55.480 |
why do you set yourself up like that no yeah i'm looking for advice here 00:29:59.720 |
but if you don't talk about the whole point of this podcast is for me to draft off people who 00:30:03.960 |
are smarter than me mission accomplished so here we go yeah we still have to teach you how to step 00:30:09.000 |
an llc to buy your house i mean it's unbelievable i'm doing it in the process sorry i'm an idiot 00:30:14.840 |
but here's the issue can i be an angel investor in uber and then be selling shares in uber to my 00:30:23.480 |
other lps and create a share in uber and then be selling shares in uber to my other lps and 00:30:25.320 |
creating that sock a secondary market or is that conflicted you know what i'm saying i'll tell you 00:30:29.400 |
you know um uh i think this is public i don't know if it's public i will say it anyway because i 00:30:35.080 |
think it's well known but um founders fund had early spacex shares that they thought it was 00:30:39.800 |
prudent to sell in the early funds those spacex shares the later fund was buying spacex shares 00:30:45.240 |
in that round um and so they were in a circumstance where they had such a big markup on the early 00:30:50.200 |
round the early fund um that they had to kind of distribute and liquid liquidate those spacex shares 00:30:55.160 |
meanwhile they're somewhat with a good overlap of lps were buying in the other fund at that at that 00:31:00.600 |
higher price you are speaking to something i lived out in the early venture funds of social capital 00:31:06.280 |
because when it was not entirely my own capital base i felt that pressure and i did similar things 00:31:12.760 |
because i was like oh wow we're in year seven eight nine you know i had and i had great lps 00:31:18.840 |
it's like wait i how can i not give capital back to the brode or mayo these are phenomenal instances 00:31:25.000 |
of people who are in the top quartile of things and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure 00:31:28.920 |
and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure 00:31:31.640 |
and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure and i felt that pressure and i started to make 00:31:33.400 |
suboptimal decisions for myself i couldn't make really you know clearly the best optimized 00:31:39.480 |
decision which would have been to hold everything as long as possible you know to your point like 00:31:43.640 |
if you're in the top quartile of things the best thing is to never sell and it's an incredibly 00:31:48.920 |
special place where you can actually have that freedom to do it the it's what's interesting is i 00:31:54.840 |
think that's what's interesting about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's 00:31:58.120 |
really interesting about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting 00:32:00.920 |
about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting about the way 00:32:03.480 |
that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting about the way that you're 00:32:05.480 |
doing it and i think that's what's really interesting about the way that you're doing it 00:32:07.560 |
and i think that's what's really interesting about the way that you're doing it and i think 00:32:09.640 |
that's what's really interesting about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's 00:32:11.160 |
really interesting about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting 00:32:13.400 |
about the way that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting about the way 00:32:15.640 |
that you're doing it and i think that's what's really interesting about the way that you're doing 00:32:16.680 |
five, three and five different baskets of shares that you're 00:32:20.340 |
getting. And you know, those are those are costless options, 00:32:23.280 |
effectively, that's actually an incredible form of portfolio 00:32:26.360 |
construction for these people. Because if you never have to 00:32:28.980 |
sell those things, you can wait till they go public and you can 00:32:31.200 |
underwrite them forever. That's probably what a lot of 00:32:34.460 |
employees in Silicon Valley have figured out implicitly, I have a 00:32:37.400 |
question I want to ask you guys as well, which is, I just want 00:32:39.880 |
to go back to the public markets for a second I tweeted out some 00:32:42.100 |
of these amazing things I learned from the Bezos. 00:32:45.340 |
Oh, my God, this is demented. Did you guys see what I what I 00:32:48.700 |
tweeted? Your tweet? Nice. And I've been reading it. It's 00:32:51.040 |
unbelievable. It's been Do you have it in front of you, Jason? 00:32:53.740 |
I do. I'll just give you the Chamath's tweet here high level. 00:32:56.680 |
28% of purchases on Amazon are completed in less than three 00:33:00.580 |
minutes. I think we've all done that. 50% of purchase is on 00:33:04.940 |
Amazon are completed in less than 15. And if you actually 00:33:08.740 |
look at that, and I think this is a really I don't know if you 00:33:11.920 |
No, this is Bezos wrote it in the letter. So if you value your 00:33:15.320 |
$10 an hour, a very low one, that's $750 a year. And that 00:33:21.260 |
means your prime is free of $120 a year. So let me say 30 and 00:33:26.760 |
let me say differently. The average trip to the store 00:33:30.440 |
driving buying coming back as an hour. So what Bezos said is that 00:33:34.580 |
typically, we will save you 75 hours because we can make all of 00:33:38.240 |
that more efficient for you. At 10 bucks an hour, that's worth 00:33:45.440 |
Which means you're you get $630 of savings. But then he goes on 00:33:49.740 |
to say, and we have 200 million customers on prime. So we're 00:33:53.500 |
saving them $126 billion. My instant reaction was two things. 00:33:58.620 |
And so the last two points in that tweet are mine. One is holy 00:34:02.020 |
fuck, that's more in one year than what most companies are 00:34:04.820 |
worth in their entire lifetime. And the second is that you can 00:34:08.340 |
buy Amazon for 13 times one year's worth of savings for a 00:34:11.900 |
customer. It just if you look at prime, yeah, which which makes 00:34:14.940 |
Amazon worth $130 billion. And then you get $630 billion in the 00:34:15.140 |
savings. And then you get $630 billion in the savings. And then 00:34:15.240 |
you get $630 billion in the savings. And then you get $630 00:34:15.400 |
billion in the savings. And then you get $630 billion in the 00:34:15.780 |
savings. And then you get $630 billion in the savings. And then 00:34:15.840 |
you get $630 billion in the savings. And then you get $630 00:34:16.200 |
billion in the savings. And then you get $630 billion in the 00:34:16.560 |
savings. And then you get $630 billion in the savings. And then 00:34:16.960 |
you get $630 billion in the savings. And then you get $630 billion 00:34:17.380 |
in the savings. And then you get $630 billion in the savings. And 00:34:17.740 |
the reason I brought up Amazon is he also wrote in there about his 00:34:19.800 |
responsibility to his employees. And we were just talking about 00:34:22.620 |
employees and churn. And this was incredible to me that 70% 00:34:27.480 |
of their employees voted down the unionization effort in Alabama. 00:34:30.340 |
And I just wanted to get sexy poo. Yeah, red, red, pillet, 00:34:33.820 |
crush it, snort it. What do you got to say? Yeah, 00:34:36.340 |
well, I mean, what happened is you had in Alabama, there's a 00:34:42.040 |
Amazon plant there, that were they there basically was an 00:34:46.960 |
election to decide whether they would go union or not. And there 00:34:50.580 |
were 2536 workers who voted in this union election, about 1800 00:35:00.320 |
and 338, who voted to unionize. And then ballots from another 00:35:04.220 |
505 workers were either were challenged by either Amazon or 00:35:08.280 |
the union. So we don't know yet what they mean. But those votes 00:35:11.520 |
won't change the outcomes, the election is over. Now, this was 00:35:14.120 |
a heavily lobbied election. I mean, Amazon was lobbying 00:35:18.360 |
employees, but so were the unions. And it looks like the 00:35:21.560 |
unions at the end of the day, or lost and the employees voted to 00:35:30.300 |
I thought it was a beautiful defense of capitalism. That's 00:35:33.180 |
very much needed right now. Yeah, you know, it reminded me a 00:35:38.580 |
lot, frankly, of the Gates Foundation annual letter, you 00:35:42.780 |
know, where Bill Gates is saying, you know, capitalism is 00:35:45.660 |
far from perfect, but it's resulted in the most important 00:35:48.960 |
era of prosperity and health and wellness in the history of the 00:35:52.860 |
planet. And, you know, as I said, on CNBC this week, you 00:35:56.760 |
know, we live in a moment where capitalism is absolutely under a 00:36:00.280 |
attack. And I truly believe it's the greatest force, the greatest potential force for good in 00:36:08.180 |
the world. It brought us a vaccine, right? It brings us innovation that pulls people out of 00:36:14.660 |
poverty, that makes people healthier, gives an opportunity for people in rural areas that are 00:36:20.780 |
impoverished to be educated. But I do think it's incumbent upon Bezos. I think this was very much 00:36:27.800 |
a robber baron sort of defense of building railroads. And I thought it was brilliant 00:36:34.080 |
in its execution. But I think it's important for all of us to stand up, not defensively, 00:36:41.160 |
but to say, what are our obligations to make capitalism the greatest force for good? 00:36:46.520 |
You know, Chamath, whether it's you and I talking about Invest America on CNBC and giving every 00:36:51.620 |
child in this country a participation in the ownership society, right? Or all the other 00:36:57.780 |
I think it's important for all of us to stand up and say, we need to do this. We need to do this. 00:37:00.600 |
We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this. We need to do this. 00:37:02.880 |
And I think one of the issues here is, you know, what we see on Twitter being part of the 00:37:07.020 |
Twitterati is, you know, people who are super woke, socialist, whatever, talking about this, 00:37:13.380 |
but in reality, the workers don't want it. And I was talking to somebody in the media space. 00:37:17.820 |
No, hold on. Can I just say something slightly different, Jason? I think what workers don't want 00:37:27.660 |
I think what they see that as is a tax that then goes and fills the coffers of certain people. I 00:37:35.420 |
think you've seen like, you know, a bunch of waste, a bunch of graft, a bunch of corruption, 00:37:40.060 |
people have been arrested. Unions are not effective anymore in collective bargaining. 00:37:44.380 |
They are not. They don't have any data. They don't have any facts. They're not... 00:37:49.600 |
But they're not set up to win. So I think, in my opinion, I think unions have an important role. 00:37:57.540 |
You need a version 2.0. You need some young, smart, bright people to reframe what unions are. 00:38:03.220 |
And then I think you would see everybody collectively organized, which is it's not about dues. 00:38:07.600 |
You don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to all of a sudden, like, use to then elect certain people. 00:38:14.340 |
And that old model is breaking. It's breaking every day. 00:38:17.500 |
Instead, I think what people need to do is like, if you come together and like, you understand what are the products we make, what are the margins we have, how is my contribution measured, you know, and then you're able to use data. 00:38:27.380 |
And in fact, to really collectively bargain, that hasn't happened yet. 00:38:32.740 |
Or it could be a free market and people could go work at Starbucks or for Postmates. 00:38:40.940 |
Yeah, if you think about what a union is, you could almost make an argument that it is the ultimate manifestation of a free market system, because it is basically like a bunch of people spinning out to have their own startup. 00:38:53.260 |
And so, you know, that group of people are saying we're not charging enough for our products. 00:38:57.260 |
Our product or service today, the value that we are creating is worth more. 00:39:01.220 |
Therefore, we should go create a, you know, a different business and charge more and effectively compete in the marketplace with a higher quality product at a higher price point. 00:39:10.580 |
And I think that that may be kind of, you know, the distinction between what people kind of view to be regulatory capture around unions where there has been government involvement in the past versus what may be possible. 00:39:21.800 |
I think I've heard some people talk about how, you know, at some point in the world, we end up with, you know, at some point, the evolution of capital. 00:39:27.140 |
Capitalism, you end up in a place where there are no employees, there's just a ton of independent contractors doing independent work. 00:39:31.940 |
And maybe there is an organization of people around doing the same work over and over together as a group, where you charge one kind of, you know, aggregated fixed rate for that service. 00:39:41.340 |
The other thing to me was like, all of a sudden, it brought into such a stark contrast. 00:39:50.040 |
And probably it could have been 80-20 or 90-10. 00:39:57.120 |
There's a very small vocal group of people who are screaming for the mountaintops about this level of unionization and organization. 00:40:02.040 |
And then the people that are actually the participants of that system are like, no, thank you. 00:40:07.720 |
Well, I mean, it shows that Amazon does a great job managing, right? 00:40:10.740 |
I mean, they create enough value and they've bid enough for the service that people don't feel like they're being underbid. 00:40:15.340 |
Media companies have been going through a unionization process from Gawker to Vox. 00:40:21.960 |
And you're starting to see a bunch of folks voting on that. 00:40:24.300 |
I was speaking to somebody who runs one of these companies. 00:40:27.100 |
And they said, in the short term, it's fabulous because they set the prices of employees. 00:40:35.460 |
So, when somebody comes to you and says, I want to raise, they say, well, we can't because here's the pay scale that you negotiated. 00:40:42.300 |
And I can't give you more than other people because one of the things you fought for as a union was pay parity. 00:40:54.060 |
They said the problem is over the long term, when you get to you, you're going to have to pay for it.