Next up is my good friend Tim Urban from wait, but why I asked him to do this as a favor

He gets a huge speaking fee. I said we have no budget

He said Jake. I think it’s 7,500 taken. I said I have no budget. I stole it all and

He has the number one talk in the history of Ted on YouTube my pal Tim Urban

I’m going all in

And instead we open sourced it to the fans

And they’ve just gone crazy with it

Love you guys

I’m going all in

He said something yesterday to Nate Silver when after about when ate one poker and he was like, you’re not

Oh, I’m gonna take away your speaking fee and I was like the fuck speaking fee

All right, so

The title of my talk is Tim talks about politics and other things that are probably a bad idea to talk about in front of

all these people

And

I want to start with why am I even writing about politics? I don’t like politics

I like writing about the science and tech in the future and procrastination and things that interest me

But as I’m thinking about the future and all this awesome stuff that we could have I started to have a bad feeling

I would think of society kind of like a giant organism

And this is how I always grew up assuming that society was like it’s like a big grown-up, but when I looked around

It looked more like a poopy pants

Six-year-old who dropped its ice cream

And I feel like this is what a lot of people are kind of getting at in these talks, you know, we’re talking about

Kind of all this crazy polarization and you know mobs and all in and to me I just look out and I see this

I see I see kind of reverting and then people are acting like they’re in middle school and like, you know

We can’t communicate and and what’s going on? So I I started putting my mind to this now. What was the problem and

The problem is very complicated and I’m not going to try to get into the whole thing today

But I think that what we can do is have a better framework to talk about the problem

I think that we are very constrained to this one-dimensional axis

It’s like a straitjacket in our conversations

You know, you hear people say the problem is, you know, the far left and the far right we need to be in the center

We need to be more moderate

What is that? The center is just a policy position, right?

The far left and far right aren’t inherently bad

The far left is just kind of radical and questioning everything and they’re experimental and the far right is just questioning

Maybe we messed up. Maybe we should go back to the way things were

I mean, there’s nothing inherently better or worse about any part of this spectrum

But we’re using these words to try to get at something else. We’d say centrist moderate

We don’t really mean in the middle of the spectrum. I think we’re talking about a different axis. I call it the ladder

So I think bringing our political discussions into two dimensions can be hugely helpful now

Sometimes you’ll see like the political compass you’ll see, you know politics in 2d, but that’s still all what you think

That’s all you know different ways to look at what you think about politics. The ladder is a how you think axis

So there’s there’s you know, there’s some nuance to it there. It’s a spectrum

But for our purposes, let’s just focus on the two kind of core ideas here

There’s high-rung political thinking and high-rung politics and low-rung politics

so the high-rungs

You can kind of divide it to high-rung progressivism and high-rung conservatism

Which I kind of think like it’s like two arguing Giants like they’re like, you know

you know that the collective efforts of high-rung progressivism conservatism are

Are kind of like lawyers in a courtroom. They’re they’re they’re heated. They don’t like each other a lot of the time

They have very different ideas of how things should go

But it’s kind of like, you know, the two lawyers in a courtroom

This is kind of a wink that goes on where they understand ultimately they’re on the same team

There are two sides of a truth kind of discovery machine, and I think this is the same thing

They don’t like each other, but they’re actually ultimately on the same team trying to figure out the roadmap

How do we move forward and the conversations in high-rung politics are complexed. They’re nuanced, you know, it’s it’s there’s different realms

There’s what is right though science and history arguing about what is that’s a that’s hard to figure out

There’s what should be right that’s that’s philosophy and ethics then there’s you know, even if they agree on those two things

How do we get there? Right? What are the right policy strategies experimentation testing?

so so there’s a lot of nuances a lot of complexity and

And one of the core defining features is if this is how you form beliefs, right?

You know you go from I don’t know some kind of process to I know high-rung politics is all about truth

They’re geared towards truth. They start here at I don’t know there’s there’s kind of an inherent humility

to this process

so I

Think of humility a little bit like trying to stay on a tightrope. It’s not easy, right? We

we are

It’s easy for your confidence, you know

You have the Dunning-Kruger thing your confidence shoots up when you look first learn something and then it goes down

After you, you know realize you don’t know as much as you know

And then sometimes you can go too low and so when you go too low

You’re in the kind of the insecure zone, right? You actually know more than you think, you know

But you but but like you’re you’re you’re just not you’re even some kind of imposter syndrome

Above the line, you know, we’re in the arrogant zone very common in politics

Obviously, you know where you you think you know more than you really actually do

So like, you know, you could even measure it like this is how much you’re full of shit

how much above like the the amount above the line you are and

In hiring politics look no one is great at staying on the tightrope. It’s very hard, but it’s

the

Culture of hiring politics is helpful because it can actually

It humbles you because people will disagree with you and it’s cool

In kind of a hiring political culture to be humble

Like if you say I don’t know or you say yeah, you know

I I haven’t thought about that issue that makes you seem smart in hiring politics, right?

It’s it’s so it’s incurred whatever the culture finds cool. We’re gonna do more of a

Core thing about hiring politics. We don’t identify with our ideas. So

I think you know

Ideas when you’re in this zone are like a machine that you built. It’s like a hypothesis, right?

You put the boxing gloves on you let your friends kick it, you know go to town

You know you throw it out there people try to argue with it, you know, the besties are big on this, right?

They love an opportunity relish opportunity to just tell the other person they’re wrong or here’s why you’re biased or here’s why you have

You know, you’re being hypocritical and this is what hiring politics is about. No one takes it personally

You’re just kicking my machine and I’m saying I bet my machine can stand up to it and they’re saying I bet it can

And if it does man, I just got more confident because I just I just realized this thing is pretty strong

If they if they break it, it doesn’t feel good. But I just got a little smarter

I just got a little bit less dumb because I learned something I was wrong about

So they’re kicking it and you know, you’re watching them box is dialectic when you watch them box together

Sometimes you play devil’s advocate you take the bat to your own idea

This is this is you know, kind of how you move up that humility tightrope to a more knowledgeable place

principles wise

One of the things that defines hiring politics is consistency. It’s not again. There’s left right center. So the principles will totally

Vary, but there’s consistency either way. So classic example Ilan talking about yesterday free speech doesn’t count to value

The you know to fight for the free speech of people who you agree with every single person in history has had that principle

That’s the yellow zone

It’s very easy to support for your principles when it’s also supporting your team

the challenge comes when it’s not when it’s people you don’t like saying things you don’t like for example or when or when it’s

Your team trying to shut down the free speech of others and you know, it’s wrong

Even though you you do hate that speech

That’s when you have to choose green zone or orange zone hiring politics is great about staying in the green zone

You will see them

Go against their own team all the time if it doesn’t conflict if it doesn’t jive with their principles

I think if you take a big step back this thing again, it gets heated

This isn’t you know, people mistake hiring politics that you know, it’s oh it’s we should be all you know

We should be you know, kind of withdrawn and and and irrational

But I think it’s actually also it can be very passionate very emotional very heated people care deeply in hiring

They can form coalitions and do marches and still and stuff like that. It’s just that they care about truth

They’re consistent with their principles. They don’t identify with their ideas

They like to argue and ultimately it’s a positive some game with a positive effect on the country

This is what drives the country forward right in the Science Academy. This is what drives

Knowledge forward right this this is what drives innovation forward is people able to disagree now

To the other thing that is lowering politics lowering politics. I have a name for it. I call it political Disney World

And I call it that because it’s a land of rainbows and unicorns and a bunch of people who will not change their mind

Under any circumstances. It’s a land of good guys and bad guys

The good guys are angels perfectly righteous

the bad guys are awful in every possible way and the good guys have good ideas and the bad guys have bad ideas and

There’s a checklist in hiring politics if someone tells me their position on guns

I have no idea what their position is on climate change or on abortion or on immigration in lowering politics

You hear one position from someone boom

I you can just look at their demeanor and I know every single position they’ve got on every single issue

The same concept in lowering politics again, no one thinks they’re in lowering politics

So people there will will think yeah, of course, I value truth, but they don’t they’re actually starting it

I know they start at the checklist item and now they say well I have to prove this is correct

So when they read an article that they put they won’t read the article

But if they read the article that disagrees with them, they’ll meet their there

They have a brick wall in their head about you know, this can’t be true. This person is biased

This is this is you know ad hominem, whatever

And when they read an article that agrees with them when they hear an opinion

There’s all that skepticism disappears and suddenly it must be true. Yes, of course

So I talked about hiring politics, it’s like the ideas are like machines, right?

It’s not you know, you don’t get sensitive about it. You can’t kick the machine right lowering politics

It’s like a baby a very cute baby who you love so much. So people’s ideas. They’re sacred in lowering politics

And and this is why you know, you can kick a machine and no, that’s no big deal

If you kick a baby, you’re an asshole. And so on the high rungs

People can disagree if you have two axes here decency and agreement and they’re totally different, right?

You can have people that disagree with you that are awesome and vice versa

You can have people that agree with you and they’re assholes, but in lowering politics, it’s very simple people who agree with you

They’re good people people who don’t they’re assholes

So this is you know, what it comes down to is, you know, you have a high rung discussion

It kind of looks like this they’re examining things lowering discussion. It’s like fucking shit. That’s a cute baby. God

It’s such a good baby. How awful are people who don’t like the baby so awful, right?

This is very common. If you listen to a low-rung political discussion, this is essentially what’s happening

They’re sitting around and they’re talking about how right they are and how awful the people and dangerous

The people are who disagree with them and that’s just they’ll just talk about that forever and ever and ever

Principles same idea here. You actually stick with the left circle. You’ll constantly a

You know giveaway here for low-rung politics is that when when when it’s not convenient yellow circle territory

They will almost always jump over to the orange circle, you know, you’ll have again, you know

So free speech you’ll see is a perfect litmus test if you know as soon as it’s free speech people

You don’t like all those principles disappear

We can you know, how about Kovan marches? Oh, you know people are completely worked up about

Lockdown marches in right-wing states soon as its marches for racial justice all good all good

This is this is a public health crisis, right? This is that’s that’s orange material. How about all the people who are super anti?

You know immigration policies and surveillance policies and foreign policy and you know debt

Issues and then as soon as it’s the other president now that your president’s in office all those same policies stay and you’re fine with them

You know the classic example that the debt was the worst thing in the world during Obama’s presidency

and then Trump comes in office starts doing it these tax packages that are adding to it and

Suddenly, it’s no problem. So there’s endless examples here

If high-rung politics is kind of this positive some game lowering politics. I see it much more like two

screaming Giants and and and and they’re there if the high-rung kind of

Emergent property is intelligence and progress the low-rung emergent property is just strength and you know fighting for power

It’s a battle of good versus evil and the big the big goal is not, you know, not

Trying to create a more perfect Union again. They think that’s the goal. But the big goal really is beating the bad guys

It’s a zero-sum game that ultimately has a negative effect

So I know I just threw a lot at you because I wanted to kind of cover the different bases of this to give

A feel for what I’m talking about here. This is the framework that I think is very useful

I’ve been living with it now for a few years

I’ve been having conversations with it and I find that it clarifies a lot and it helps with a lot of things like

for example

If you just think it’s a horizontal axis a as I said, you know

You mistake that the far left and right must be the problem, but it’s not it’s the low rungs that are the problem

That’s actually what people are trying to say the moderate centrist, you know think that’s not what they’re actually trying to say

They’re trying to say high-rung which can expand the the the horizontal axis

There’s more than one tug-of-war going on we think if you just have one axis

Well, it’s left versus right and that is a tug-of-war both in the high and low rungs that is you know

There are fighting for what they want

But there’s a tug-of-war going on from the north and south as well

The the the progressive I think I know a lot of people in here probably are thinking I’m in that upper left guy

That’s my guess

And if that’s true, and it might be true

You you do have a tug-of-war going on against that upper right guy

You also have a tug-of-war gone going on against that lower left guy

This is the thing that I think is important to realize is when you have this that the people who are on your team

You know, they also hate Trump or whatever

They might be actually like the biggest impediment to what you care about politically. They undermine the progress of what you care about

It also can enhance kind of collaboration because if you’re in that one of those upper Giants

The other upper giant is a lot more on your ultimate team

If you take a big step back then the lower giant that wears the same color

so once you start to think this way

I think it helps to to

Kind of loosen some of the tribalism and give some nuance to our discussions and give some nuance to what we’re trying to do

Now the story I wanted to talk about here is that this is okay. This is normal by the way

This is not a problem. Every democracy in the world will have this the founders knew this would be here. The goal was not to

Suppress low rungness it was to contain it and actually, you know in the economy to harness it for progress

But in politics to contain it so it can’t totally take over they contain it by taking away the physical cudgel

You know, you can’t just conquer and become a dictator like so many low rung Giants and other countries have done

There’s there’s laws here. And and and most importantly there’s kind of a high rung immune system, which is just vigorous defenses defense

Defense against low rung infringement low rungness will try to shut down the conversations in the high rungs in the high rungs

Resist they say no fuck off. Like we

We know where you can’t enforce your echo chamber upon us. You’re allowed to have your echo chamber. That’s fine

You can’t enforce it. So this is how it’s supposed to be now

Part of the reason we’re all here continually in each talk talking about man politics is awful and things are bad

And there’s a poopy pace pants

Six year old with the ice cream falling is because of I think we’ve had some big changes to the environment

This is the kind of simple human equation. I think about you’ve got human nature is constant

The environment is what changes and that produces different behavior, right? You know the people who are really hardened during war, you know

They’re not different

Biologically than us they just were put in a very different environment and it created different kinds of people

So our environment has changed a lot and I think it’s causing a lot of problems

I think it’s causing a low-rung flare-up if you know, so here’s one way to think about it in the 60s. You’ve got

intraparty factions within the parties

You’re you have a lot of progressive Republicans and conservative Democrats and the these these factions within the parties

They hate each other right which is

Which was a source of tribalism. Some people are just so focused on the other people in their party the other factions

There’s the national parties like we have that we talk about a lot today Republicans and Democrats nationally

That was a source of tribalism and then there was this, you know

USSR and also before that Hitler like there were all these, you know

Scary foreign enemies that created this kind of macro tribalism on the national level. So you have

patriotism which is

One kind of tribalism, but it also unifies down below and the intraparty factions might actually cause the national parties to collaborate sometime

So it’s not that people were less tribal. It’s that tribalism was distributed

What’s happened is now the intraparty factions have disappeared because the conservative Democrats have all gone to the Republicans

they’re the progressive Republicans have all gone for lots of reasons we can get into some other talk, but

That’s waned. There’s still a little you still have Bernie and you know, Hillary not liking, you know, they’re people not like it

But it’s it’s much less of a thing

likewise, you still have you know, yes, so Russia, you know, but

Mostly that’s not the focus. In fact

The focus is is it’s so not here that when there’s a foreign thing now

Usually we’ll just use it as like political fodder for our national debate, you know, all the Russians are on their side

No, they’re on their side, right and it there’s no patriotism that unites anymore

What you have is one big old political divide and all the tribalism from all those things is concentrated into one place

Which is an unhealthy that’s not great. I don’t think that’s good

and

So this is one environmental change. No one’s fault

It’s just what happened then, you know, you also have a lot of things with like the electoral map you have between gerrymandering and you know

Geographic sorting you have purple counties turning, you know

Mostly red and blue now which means primaries are actually electing the farthest right and left people as opposed to you know

People who can win a general election

There’s a lot of other kind of little environmental changes, but one huge one that we talked about is the media

I think of a media. I’d like to place them on a media matrix accuracy on the y-axis and objectivity

So the you want to be is the top middle right and actually for a long time there was an incentive magnet

To be there for ABC CBS NBC, right?

They didn’t want to seem like they were inaccurate and had to cater to the whole country which kept them somewhat close to that

There was this incentive magnet today. You have cable TV and then eventually you have, you know, talk radio and you’ve got

Then the internet and all these websites you have tribal media, which is a totally different set of incentives

You cater to one side only you it’s more bias

the

The more clicks and accuracy is just not a concern to the audiences

they end up having and then you have this feedback loop like was discussed yesterday where once you

Cater to that now you have to keep that going right? You’ve now lost a neutral audience and

And so now we have a lot of Americans super addicted to a really trashy reality show

real politicians of Washington

And then I took me a long time to make this by the way

I

Think McConnell’s my favorite anyway

so

Then you’ve got of course the big bomb drops in our environment. You’ve got

Social media. This is a real graph showing people retweet things. They agree with two people. They agree with almost entirely, right?

It’s these algorithmic bubbles. It’s insane, you know, and so if you’re one of the people that actually I follow all kinds of people

You’re very rare because and and and it didn’t again it didn’t used to be this way

John Ronson talks about you know, how it used to be a radical de-shaming like Twitter, you know, you go on and be like

Oh, I do this embarrassing thing people would be like me too and it’d be like oh

So nice and fuzzy at the very beginning and then it turned into wait a second

You know this bad guy is harassing women at work and now actually this woman has power for the first time

she can talk about on social media you can create a whole kind of

Coalition against it. He gets fired and it’s exhilarating and that’s good, right? This is speaking truth to power

Problem is now people are exhilarated and they’re saying who’s next right and you have this new source of power

Which again can be used for good but it’s gotten picked up by a lot of the low-rung

Tribes who have started to use this cudgel

That started it’s been a while now, you know creating mobs to actually enforce low-rung politics

And what happens is you end up with high-rung world very scared kind of caught off guard

The normal defenses the normal immune system is not

Doing its job and so what happens when the high-rung world gets scared

This is a very you know, it can set off a domino effect. Imagine we picture. This is the high-rung world

These are brains. This is what a bunch of high-rung people in the community think

They all think different things based on the color right now

If we draw a circle around them, this is imagining what they’re saying is the circles color

So here is the perfect high-rung community, right?

Everyone is it’s a diverse, you know thinking and they’re saying what they’re thinking and it connects together into this super brain

It’s awesome, right? But now maybe the social media cudgel maybe something else

It starts to be a little bit scary and and this one group starts to say the only opinion that’s okay

Is the orange opinion anyone who says anything other than the orange opinions an awful person?

The high-rung immune system supposed to kick in and say cool fuck off if it doesn’t say that

Everyone starts getting scared and then cowardice starts to spread and before you know it

Everyone’s just saying the orange out loud, even if they don’t agree with it

No one wants to outwardly say what they think anymore

And the problem is you can’t actually see what’s going on in the brains

You only know what people what people are thinking based on what they’re saying. So all people see is this so if you’re this guy

Who actually has one opinion and actually is full of diverse thinking around them. They don’t know that they assume it must look like this

Everyone starts to feel like I’m the only one who thinks this

I’m the only one who doesn’t like this movement or this

politician or whatever and

The group intelligence that’s so awesome about high-rung politics, it disappears

I think what we’re seeing is if what you know, why why are things so bad?

I don’t think it’s because we move to the far right and far left. I think it’s because

You have a low rung flare-up

Generated by changes of the environment and the high rungs have been caught off guard by a really rapid environment changes

And they’ve just disappeared. They’ve shrunk away and the low rungs are running, you know, buck wild

You can see this on the right. I think mostly in Washington

You see the debt ceiling, you know being used as a weapon in a way that should never happen. You see

McConnell and the Senate not putting through a Senate candidate a

Supreme Court candidate because it’s the last year totally unprecedented. That’s not the rule then four years later

They go and they do they put their own candidate. This is low-rung shit. Of course Trump with the election

I mean

Reagan’s big thing was you know

The peaceful transition of power is what makes us special and you know, Trump, of course is the exact opposite on the left

I think we see it less in Washington and much more in culture. I think wokeness is

Two things it’s a far-left ideology and it is far left

It’s you know postmodern and it’s it’s Marxist and that’s fine. You can have those things in the higher rungs the thing that makes

Wokeness low rung is the way they treat others

You can you can go and have your own but you can have your own echo chamber and do it

What the woke mantra is, you know

What a low-rung person in a liberal country supposed to say is I don’t like these ideas

So I won’t listen to them

What a what you’re not supposed to be able to say is I don’t like the idea

So no one is allowed to listen to them right with a disinvitation on campus, which has become very common, right?

It’s it’s it’s not saying I won’t go to that talk, which is a low-rung thing to say. It’s much worse

It’s saying no one on this campus is allowed to hear that talk and we see that having played out

We see James Bennett the editor of the New York Times op-ed section getting fired

Because he published an op-ed by Tom Cotton that 62% of the country agreed with

But it didn’t jive with woke

Orthodoxy you see Denise Young at Apple a black woman who’s the head of diversity who says to me diversity is not you know

It’s it’s more complicated than just about something like race when I look at a 12 blue-eyed blonde haired guys

I see I see diversity. I see different people diverse in different ways. She was fired for saying that

You can go on and on medical journals are retracting papers that have never retracted papers before because the double peer-reviewed papers

Because they get a rise on Twitter from the woke mob

So I think we’re seeing this in different ways

But to me, it’s all one big story, which is that we’re having a low-rung flare-up and these low-rung Giants are out of hand

They’re doing things

They’re not supposed to be able to be doing and they’re doing that because the immune system is failing and that’s why we all look

Like this now the good news is I do think this can change. I don’t think most people are like this

I think most people are and by the way, if you think this is all another binary divide

We are all high rung and low rung at different times. And that’s one of the big differences here

I think that if we want to get out of this and get back to here

We need two things who we need

awareness

Which is the first thing we need we need to be aware of I think this this this this axis and to think about

Not just where am I being bullied intellectually where what’s really the low-rung thing and what’s not but also where are we being low-rung?

Because we all can do this

this is this is this is a huge part of our brain that wants to go and and identify with our ideas and and

Be hypocritical. So where am I doing it?

Where are the people around me doing it and and maybe realizing?

Okay, maybe the people that on the high rungs when I am there that disagree with me horizontally

Maybe those are my friends a lot more than the low-rung people that are voting for the same candidate and finally awareness

Without saying anything out loud is useless, right? You need awareness has to be coupled with courage

People have to start

Speaking out and actually that’s the the high-rung immune system is built of

Courage, it’s built of people actually standing up and you’ve seen this with some companies declaring. We will not

We’re not a political place. That’s courage in the face of a cudgel that’s trying to get them to be political

and so I think if you can have a little bit more awareness and a little bit more courage this kind of this low-rung flare-up

Can be I think?

Controlled and I think we can end up in a better place. Thank you

Wow

What an amazing talk to follow

The talk we had earlier I think with I don’t know if you got to witness it the Palmer lucky talk

I was trying to think of how to trash you because it was so popular

So you were gonna go low-rung? Yeah, but I mean in fact

You know that I think Palmer and I had some low-rung moments where you know, he was doing the anti-Hillary stuff

I was dunking on him for it

And then we saw an example of maybe adult high-rung behavior of like hey, let’s sit here and talk about the differences

I want to put out there just talking about the woke movement for a second

One of the major challenges I had in this event was certain people attending the event

Made some people in that group

Unwilling to come to the event

No offense Keith

In other words like Keith Sachs, you know, and then even Glenn Grunwald and Greenwald. I’m sorry and Matt Taibbi

Were triggers for certain people to not come speak. They were gonna kick the baby

They were gonna kick the baby. And so I think and then on the right

we have I think some pleasure in knowing you’re triggering the libs and

It’s exacerbated this it’s hard for me as a conference

Producer or a podcast producer to get the two sides to sit and just have a reasonable discussion at time

how do we break that logjam of

The right just loves to troll and trigger the libs and the libs are like I’m not even participating in the discussion

With this group of people that group of people, you know, the Sachs is the Keats the you know, whatever

He triggers a lot of limbs

But let’s start there and then Keith I’d love to hear you respond to this dynamic which I know you are fully aware of

Yeah, so I think that we can get there’s some clear definitions here

Not

Wanting to go to something be that that you know a high runger says, oh they disagree with me great

Let me go and that’s that’s that’s what they really want to hear because I want to learn something, right?

The low runger says fuck those evil awful people. I’m not gonna go right they storm away fine

You’re in a liberal country live and let live you these are both. Okay

What’s not okay is the low rungers

In pressuring you to kick off those speakers because otherwise they’re going to start a movement a petition a boycott of your show that’s gonna

That’s gonna end up hurting you in some way, you know

So taking out smearing you on social media and into the pressuring this to not happen at all

That’s saying no one’s allowed to go to that conference. That’s what’s not. Okay. It’s interesting. You bring this up. I shared with you that

back channel

There was there was back channel of you know, how beautiful a moment was with the high rung discussion

We just had there was also a dark moment before the event where a group of people who did not agree

Were doing what you’re saying. The woke mob was saying

We need to get other hello on the left

David Sachs time there’s just to tell me when rob boy got here. So there was literally to your point an

Intolerance level of not only are we not going to come to all in summit because sacks or this person and that person are there

We’re going to start telling other people to not go and not participate

It literally happened and I had to stop but this is a so look this conference did happen

Those people did come ideas were spread. So this is a victory for high rungness. This is yeah

So then you keep

Tell us why is it so pleasurable?

To trigger the libs David Keith. No in all seriousness, you love to debate you take all comers. No problem

You want to get in the arena?

What you’re seeing now?

How did I actually just interject on that? Sure. So I mean speaking for myself

I don’t get any pleasure in triggering libs and that’s not my objective and I don’t think it’s necessarily keys either

What you’re really doing is because we are willing to debate and we’re not afraid to have the conversation

You’re now redefining that as triggering other people. No, we’re not. We’re just want to have a conversation

Now yeah

I think it’s I think it’s really easy to tell who are the people who have good points to make and are and have

Intellectual confidence because they’re the ones willing to show up and have conversations

And I think it’s the biggest cop-out for anybody to say well

I can’t be your comfort big I see this name and this name on your agenda. How lame is that?

What and and and to be honest, you know a lot of the positions

I think you and Palmer probably disagree on the approach to Ukraine. He’s probably very pro

Supporting that and you might be a little more dovish

Yeah, so I think two points first of all a I took on this fool’s errand like ten years ago of correcting everything wrong on

the internet

It’s an insane idea

But the reason why I did it was I felt like wow someone in

Who doesn’t know any better might read something that’s wrong and they might believe it

And so at least if I start correcting it

They’ll see that there’s multiple perspectives and then they’ll have to dig in as opposed to just take this for granted

The second thing is yeah, I have no desire to trigger the libs

But I do feel like I have a platform and I don’t want to die without having used

Whatever influence I have to proselytize for ideas I believe in so if I have 300,000 followers

I feel I would be neglecting like my light like

Benefits of my life if I’m not proselytizing for the few five six seven eight nine things I care about

And so I don’t want to wake up one day and say I wish I had done X Y or Z and it could have maybe

Changed the world

Can I have Tim a question around his name is Tim

Hey, nice to Tim David free. How are you?

We actually haven’t met before

I

Do you think that over time?

Content has gotten shorter sound bites have become kind of the primary form of content

You know we used to be that we’d sit down and read books and we’d read newspapers and we’d watch these long-form news hour

Conversations and then you know things got shorter. They got faster. They got quicker and as a result

We ended up kind of debasing ourselves and ending up in this point where everything has to be reduced to that primal

instinctual reaction moment and

It gets even more significantly fueled by the feedback loops associated with social media

So the things that you see more of are the things that really do trigger that kind of primal, you know

emotional

Sense more is that a big driver. Do you think societally in terms of have we become more tribal over the last century?

Yeah, I mean, I think environmental changes are just it’s like they will produce behavioral changes and

It can be sometimes a feedback loop where you have shorter content more emotional, you know

Kind of triggering content like you said, you know, there’s there’s almost like pheromones

Evolutionarily it wins. Yeah. Well and all you know on Twitter actually, there’s a phenomenon where actually

But virality dumbs down information because

nuanced information doesn’t hit as hard totally and so it’s when you have it’s if you it’s it’s kind of like

It’s like evolution where you see, you know that the tweet that ends up super viral

It’s it’s you know survived a hundred other competing tweets to get there and the ones that are rising to the top

It’s a mechanism. There’s a mechanism right now. That is that is pushing

It’s kind of forming a magnet down in political Disney World that is pulling us down and I one of the questions I you know

Have for Elon is like what what’s how can that somehow be?

you know what one idea that a friend and I were kicking around is like some kind of almost like

you

Know Wikipedia managed to somehow stay

Somewhat, you know nuanced and neutral in a way and and could there be some kind of like giant 10,000 pool, you know of moderators

That actually kind of put you know, rank things by can maybe high rung and low rung

And and the algorithm doesn’t necessarily suppress the lower and stuff

It just doesn’t push it which right now the algorithm in is you’re talking about like moderation editorialization almost

Yeah, at least like to give it like a credit rating on maybe a high-low scale

I kind of view this as like a muting effect

It’s like an institutionalization of these social networks where everyone talks about them being free to run as a network

Without kind of a central system of control, but sometimes that central system of control has an important role in playing

moderation muting

Editorialization that I’ll kind of avoid some of the adverse consequences. It’s definitely optimizing downwards right now. What do you think Keith? Yeah

Should Elon buy Twitter and then yeah, I started to disagree

I mean I grew up in the 70s and 80s and soundbite, you know was the term of art for like 30-second commercials

And that’s how we debated politics was 30-second commercials

I don’t know any evidence that suggests that tweets today in politics are worse than the 30-second commercials

I grew up with and if you think about polarization, I also watched used to watch Europe European politics in the 70s and 80s

Yeah, the most extreme ends of politics you’ll ever see we don’t have any of those extremes in the United States still today

Yeah, so I don’t think there’s I think a lot of people like make arguments without evidence that things have changed and I actually start

With like first principles like wait, where’s the evidence like people talk about this information?

There’s no evidence that the American voter in 2016 have less information or less accurate information than 1888 or 1894

1910 in fact the opposite is true by most by most serious studies

Yeah, this is all kind of made up in my mind

Yes, Elon should buy Twitter to save the world, but it’s not gonna be a good financial investment

What how does it save the world do you think well we need a free speech platform where people can debate ideas and

The left wing of Twitter the employee base has completely suppressed ideas. For example, my husband

I happen to know this wrote an article in foreign policy magazine like the most prestigious

Publication in the entire planet for foreign policy debate about the CCP

Twitter refused for years to allow them to advertise that article published in foreign policy magazine

So there’s clearly someone at Twitter suppressing content

That’s critical of the CCP and we tried appealing to everybody and they wouldn’t change this

So there’s either Chinese spies there or a left-wing culture that you know suppresses debate. This is foreign policy magazine

We can’t get any more prestigious than that

It’s absurd let alone the fact that I have 300,000 followers and do not have a blue check

I must have the largest follower of anybody who doesn’t have a blue check and it’s all because I’ve used unacceptable that that seems really

Pretty ridiculous considering many other VCS who are meaningfully less credentialed, of course experience

There’s obvious and I have you know insiders at Twitter have sent me screenshots of various things

There’s no doubt that it’s a left-wing monoculture

That’s suppressing ideas and someone needs to fix that either the government needs to fix it

Which is worse than Elon fixing it, but the government if the US Congress is turned over

There’s gonna be a lot of subpoenas flying over to Twitter because there are absolutely foreign governments influencing that some of those decisions at Twitter

Well, I mean it was in fact proven that there were Saudis

inside of Twitter

Saudi national yes the best tweet retort ever by you. Yeah. I wish I would be that good

Yeah, I mean what was it tweet?

Well, you know the the Saudi Prince was complaining and he said that please explain freedom of speech and how that works in your country

Oh, right. Yeah, I mean

to the press

should

Can you explain cancel culture in your framework? Yeah, so

I like to use a couple terms here. There’s there’s social bullying which is no one

If you disagree you can’t be my friend

And again, that’s okay, right? I don’t think you’re an awesome person if you act like that, but you’re allowed to

Then there’s what I would call idea supremacy

Which is you know, it’s kind of

It’s it’s it’s like like I’ve been saying, you know, no one is allowed to

Say this thing whether you’re my friend or not

And and and you know, if you want to run something on your own property, you can make all the speech rules

But cancel culture is specifically going into places that are supposed to be high rung

You know what? You know what it says on top of Harvard College Veritas, right Veritas

Which is which is them that is that is them putting their stake down on the ground and saying we are a high rung place

They’re not say using those words

But that is what they’re saying

We are a place that cares about truth that cares about diversity of ideas

they’re right that cares about openness and inquiry and curiosity and all of this and

So cancel culture it goes into places like that Google, you know, you know started off and they had their all hands meetings

It was all about you know, and every idea is good criticize the leadership likes, you know, you know, right?

So these things were specifically higher up right that they were founded on these things cancel culture goes into those places and says

Our preferred echo chamber now those rules apply to everyone here and it’s a power

You know

You’re not a lot of things want to do that, right?

A lot of you know

I’m sure the pro-lifers would like to go into campuses and say no one can have a pro-choice position

They don’t have the power cancel culture is a product of a group

That’s not supposed to have the power to do that having the power to do that

And I think that comes from the fear of social media. It comes from this hyper charged

Tribalism in the environment we live in right now and a lot of things

So one of the solutions to many things in life is moving to Miami and I’m serious about

One of the most stark things when we moved to Miami 17 months ago was in Miami you hot

It’s incredibly refreshing because everybody has a different position. There’s literally no environment socially politically

Culturally business wise where you won’t run into people who voted for Biden or for Trump

Like you cannot go to a dinner of eight people and have people have the same views

You cannot work in a company where people have don’t haven’t voted or didn’t abuse and if you try to caricature people

You’re gonna be wrong all the time

Even I catch myself like assuming this person of this demographic is going to be liberal and they’re not and so here people learn to

Both be polite

Like sort of like when you’re growing up you were taught like you don’t debate religion in front of people at dinner

People are polite

But also they have to engage and it’s incredibly refreshing because people learn to partake in arguments and it would be impossible to live in

Miami successfully unless you do this every day

And so I think this is a model for America like many things in Miami, but keep over time doesn’t that transform?

So like isn’t there a concentration of ideas of memetics that ultimately kind of rule the juice and you know

This whole thing kind of eventually

You end up with with you know, two pole two poles two camps

I mean, isn’t this how all society start the great debate the great conversation?

This is a microcosm of what just happens with human behavior over time

Because if you understand ideas and one of the benefits for me was I grew up in like the most woke environments ever

I spent years at Stanford and then Harvard like pretty well places and all my professors and political science were super liberal

But I was conservative the whole time and every one of my you know essays if you read my final exams

they’re all conservative because I had to learn to master all the liberal arguments and find the weaknesses and the data points and be

Able to marshal evidence and that’s a healthy thing

So when you encounter people who have different views like for example, you know, there’s controversial laws in Florida

Don’t say gay quote-unquote, you know changes in abortion policy here people here will talk about them politely and debate them

And that’s good for everybody

Like I bet you for example, like, you know, if you read the media or you read Twitter

You think this abortion law change in Florida is radical?

It’s actually more permissive than any European country

But nobody knows that France actually only allows abortion up to 14 weeks. Germany is like 16. So we’re 20 here

So we’re more liberal than Europe, but nobody talks about that on Twitter that way

But if you live in Florida, you would actually know that by the way, the campus is you just described. They’re not here anymore

You the amount of testimonials from students saying if I disagree with the professor on my exam, I will get a bad grade

Even worse again, this is there when there’s encroachment by a low-rung giant and there’s no pushback. It will keep going

So they’ve gone to some crazy places. Here’s an example in Berkeley right now and and UCLA and about 20 other schools

if you

Want to apply to be a chemistry professor

The first thing that you do is you have to fill out a diversity statement and there and it’s called that sounds nice a diversity

But it’s actually you have to basically prove that you have a proven track record of social justice activism of the world variety

Not not more MLK style social justice very specific social justice in this and if you are not a proven

Activist that has the right political. It’s more than even a political litmus test

You have to actually be an activist to get it to even be seen by the chemistry department

They won’t even show the chemistry. So there’s stories like that

You’re just like oh my god, but that’s what happens when the immune system is failing this the things will continue

So what is the what is the antidote to that if we for those of us that can’t move to Miami?

Well, everybody can we welcome we welcome you

Yeah, the antidote is leadership because what happens is in each one of these stories, you know

James Bennett getting fired from New York Times, right? You read the story in detail

you know McNeil is another example for the New York Times for a whole long story, but

In each story there you the leadership often because leadership is you know

Most people are not insane like this almost every this is again with the orange circles almost everyone

Actually thinks this is insane these firings and that’s what’s scary is they’re happening

Anyway, so in each of these stories you see a moment when the leadership first says well, you know here we do agree

even though I hate his views to

you know, we value a diversity of a viewpoint and

Then there’s a huge pushback and there’s a moment of truth

Are they gonna stand up for the Veritas and for the for the core values?

Are they gonna or are they going to seed the culture to the mob and what the cancel culture is is

these moments of truth the leadership

choosing cowardice and

The actual cudgel of social media doesn’t actually hit the person

It’s the leader

actually going and actually firing them the leaders the one who ends up actually being standing up to the mob as opposed to letting

The mob rule you yes, which is which is the hard thing in a lot of these very hard to do you think about we

We see it at all these companies in Silicon Valley. Well, we see it when we do the podcast

We had a moment and we were discussing the don’t say gay slash

parents choice

Bill which you look at the framing of that. It’s completely

Hilarious that like we framed it as those two things either

You’re like you don’t want parents to be able to parent their kids or you hate gay people

It’s like really is that what we’re talking about here?

And we looked at it and a couple of besties were having a conversation

I won’t say who and we were trying to get educated on it and I’m like

should

People be able to talk about their gay parents in first grade second grade third grade. Of course, you’re a parent. You’re gay

I’m assuming you don’t want people to be able to tell you you can’t be talked about at school and that was like and

Gender assignment and what gender you choose and now we’re sitting there going I don’t actually know enough about this

Should you introduce that you can be one of 40 genders at six years old or 12 years old?

When should sex education start? I actually don’t know. I we would learned at 15. Should it be 12?

I don’t know and we’re we were like, is this a discussion we can have on the podcast?

without us actually

Consulting with some people who know more than us and discussing it and I’ve written about three or four tweets about the the trans

swimmer and

I have feelings on it, but I’m like should I actually

Tweet that I find it’s profoundly unfair that this person gets to win every single

Women’s meet and I kind of feel bad for the women who now can the best they can do a second place is am I?

Gonna get canceled for that because that was my initial

response to it and I don’t actually know my position because I don’t know that other person’s story who’s a

trans woman and

Maybe she does deserve to be in that. I don’t know if anybody has an answer for that

So I’m curious, you know from the besties themselves, you know, what what are your thoughts on?

Are tackling some of those things and and not getting canceled or the low back these things happen on every dimension every day

Which is you have more questions than answers. I think Tim you wrote it in the slide

It’s kind of like you’re navigating between high conviction and you know high knowledge

But that’s a path and that path happens because you can talk to other people and you can ask questions and you can figure out

Where you are today, you can figure out where you could be tomorrow

That’s what’s not allowed anymore right on any on any dimension. It’s not any one specific issue

It’s on so many topics, right?

And the thing with that is that it gets people very afraid and then when you are afraid I think to your point

What happens is you take the most simplest reductive point of view that can be the most acceptable on any topic?

Whatever and this is what causes this snowball

Literally, I’m scared to talk about the trans issue because I feel like I don’t know enough

I also don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings

I would feel terrible if I did hurt his feelings

So the reason you want to talk about it is because the social costs of even taking the risk of having that conversation

Outweighed any potential benefit. It’s just the conversation gets so hot

but I want to I want to go back to what Tim said that the moment of truth is when the leader of the

Organization has the choice of whether to fire the person who the mobs going after it seems self-evident that the leader shouldn’t

basically join the mob and

inflict mob justice on this

poor employee

but they do anyway and the question is why and I would argue that

The reason why is because they’re afraid of the New York Times hippies. That’s it. That’s what it comes down to

They’re afraid that the woke mob will come after them next and we’ve seen it before when Brian Armstrong

Implemented his policy of no politics the workplace at coinbase who then retaliated against him

He got a New York Times hippies

That was they are the enforcement wing of the woke mob when Elon said that he would restore free speech to Twitter

What was the response the New York Times wrote an article basically trying to?

Identify him with the apartheid regime in South Africa

Even though he was a kid the headline of the article didn’t even match up

With the body of the article the body of the article had one of the stories about him as a child

It was also a historical account of you know

A bunch of oppressive things that happened in South Africa and in it when he was a child, right?

He was so the body of the story had nothing but anecdotes about how he even as a young

Adolescent basically rejected apartheid and yet the headline the story was basically painting him with this brush

So basically calling him a racist no and and it came from his dad and they have a super complicated relationship

And so it was like the it was like the one person where you couldn’t have necessarily

Guaranteed what would have come out of Errol’s mouth and it was still so supportive of Elon. Yeah, right

So if we’re gonna overcome this problem, I think we have to have this recognition

That you know that these

Prestige outlets like the New York Times who for some reason have so much credibility in our culture

They have the power or they used to have the power to basically destroy people’s careers

we have to realize that these are just

Places that have been hijacked by radicals and like their stories are meaningless. They’re completely biased

We have to stop investing them with the cultural power to like destroy people

It’s that simple happens is there’s a lag time now do Fox News

They don’t here’s the difference

They don’t have the cultural power to destroy anyone and who have they destroyed named somebody that like what woke mob have they engineered?

Mike the pillow guy

I’m not saying they wouldn’t if they could I’m just saying that they can’t because they don’t have that kind of cultural power

Before we Tim you were gonna say something

I was gonna say when an institution like this gets what happens is a

Mob like this that they don’t build anything, you know, they don’t create what they do is they appropriate they hijack

Something they take its existing good reputation, which is real power, which is a lot of power and they spend it down

It’s not constructive. It’s destructive. Yeah

Yes, but they’ll actually go in like it’s like they like they take over and they and they spend the reputation down

But in the lag time between when the reputation catches up it can do a ton of damage

So again, I would say that you know a lot

I’m scared about what’s going on in like Ivy League institutions that they have so much

Credibility, but in a lot of really bad things have kind of happened there and it’s a yeah

Can I suggest we pivot to tech and investing while we’re here?

Keith and I were talking backstage and I was like what investments have you made?

He’s like I’ve made no investments in 2022 and you guys have like how big your latest fund

5 billion 5 billion dollar latest fund and you haven’t made any investments and you know

The fund as a whole has made some investments. I haven’t let any but you have it

Yeah, I haven’t let any new investments in 2022. Yeah last year

I’d led the 13 or 14 in a year

So to go to you to go to effectively zero for half the year is like me being on vacation

Can you tell us what your point of view is? Well, I mean I tweeted in October

But you know that we were at the height of the market

I tweeted last January that we’re gonna see mm all over again. And so privately internally

I’ve been arguing this internally that this is exactly what’s gonna happen

And so, you know, my behavior should reflect my views. I believe in some consistency and harmonization

So if I believe tech stocks and tech companies aren’t worth that much

I can’t be investing until they reset and so I don’t want to spend money and invest in companies that aren’t gonna make me money

My job is to ultimately return billions of dollars to my LPs

And if I can’t do that, I shouldn’t be giving anybody any money. So when do you change your mind?

Well, there are founders who are ahead of the curve

There always are who understand where the world’s going

They actually understand the world where the world’s going better than I do

They actually teach me about where the world’s going more typically and if they have appropriate expectations, I’m happy to invest

So the last three or four investments I did make actually were all interestingly enough about 1.5 million dollar investments

Where the founder walked in and said, you know, I don’t need a lot of money. I could accomplish a lot

I can achieve it inflection moments for a very small amount of capital. That was the easiest thing ever to say

Yes at 1.5 million dollars. I don’t need to think about the macro world

I don’t need to think about where the you know

Nasdaq’s going and so the last three or four investments were all incredibly disciplined founders that I made like late last year into

Arguably into January now we have doubled down just to be clear about our conversation

We have doubled down in portfolio companies where we’ve led new rounds

But as far as a new investment from scratch, I haven’t made any new ones this year

So when you double down in a moment like this, how do you set valuation, especially if the last valuation was maybe

Felt like a top tick. If I think the founder has sort of digested where the world is then, you know

We have a dialogue about valuation

Otherwise, I actually encourage them to go shop it like I’m saying like we will give you money

But will you price it at the same mark at a discount?

No, if they have a fair market valuation from top tier firms

We’ll try to be like in that zone

But they’ll often go to the market and people will be like either pass pass pass pass pass or they will give them

You know just reality and then we’ll match that but we’ve done that a few times where we’ve encouraged founders typically we wouldn’t do this

Because my partner Brian Singerman loves to power money to companies that are working

That’s been we’ve been a high conviction fund for about a decade

So typically if we like a company will lead the next round and lead the next round

We’ve done this with ramp. For example, we’ve led like three or four rounds

But now with a valuation reset going on it’s been easier sometimes with founders

I really like to say why don’t you go talk to five?

Well, it’s just like go talk to five other people and I’ll match what they do if they’re really top-tier people

But like I want you to get like fair market feedback, you know

Not just have to rely upon my judgment car. Are we at the point in the cycle where the down rounds the warrants?

the

liquidation preferences have

Happened or are starting to be discussed definitely seen a lot of like preferences again

Explain what it is and why that’s important. Yeah, so liquidation preference basically means that

The investor is going to get their money back first

Regardless of what happens in the world and that nobody who’s a shareholder

Nobody who’s a founder is gonna get it

Nobody’s a common shareholder, which basically means founder employee is gonna get any money until

the investor gets all their money back times some multiple and that multiple is based on time and or just a hurdle it’s very scary

But it can be arbitraged by success

It’s founders sometimes can arbitrage it

Well, meaning they have asymmetric information about the future of the company if they really believe they can hit escape velocity in a short period

Of time it can be a decent gamble. I’ve seen someone like Jack Dorsey at square did this very sophisticated

CEO and he knew what he was doing and knew why he was doing it and it’s worked out pretty well actually

But it’s if you’re playing with a lot of fire

So it’s not for everybody and you should get a lot of feedback and advice before

The flat rounds are definitely happening. The new flat is the up round kind of philosophy even in some of our better

Are those senior like prep for Perry? It depends

another round

They’re all over the map

So it’s the market hasn’t shifted to the point that every new money coming in senior to all other money

That’s how much leverage and what quality investors you have on your cap table

Like sir, for example, someone tries to put a senior like preference on top of my capital

I’m gonna yell at them a lot and if they ever want a new investment that were you know

It’s from our fund. They may not want to do that. Yeah, I think that we’re a

Couple turns away. That’s what the Godfather the discount rounds

Well, some companies are gonna have to try the problem is like for example, we don’t like to do those rounds

There’s so much brain damage in the politics of that with founders require a walk us through that

Why tell us about that brain down?

so typically if I found you think there’s an efficient market of pricing right like I need this much capital and the markets gonna

float what the price of that capital is in

Private capital. It’s not really true

like so if someone comes to me and says, you know, my last round was done at 300 million, you know nine months ago and

Today it probably get priced at let’s say 120 million

I’m more likely to say no than to give them an offer at 120

because I know their prior investors and their prior employees are gonna be mad at me and furious at me and I don’t want a

lot of

Founders and people annoyed at me and so that brain damage isn’t worth it

So I’m more likely and our fund is more likely to say no then try to find whether 80 100 120 140 is the appropriate price

Which is very bad for the company in some ways because you they might need the capital you starve them of money

Yeah, no, they may be able to find somebody else

But we typically a founders fund really don’t like to do those rounds

The only way we would consider it is pretty much of everybody on the cap table called us up the founder of CEO

The board members prior investors said we really want you to do this and like we’re all collectively holding hands and want you to do

This then we seriously consider it. Do you at the end of q1?

Do you guys sit around and reset valuations and marks before you tell your LPs what these companies are worth meaning your own sense when

You sort of generate a sense of valuations. Like yeah, we do mark down actively mark. We do proactively mark down

What’s your methodology for that?

Peter’s views

We’d be open to doing that if we felt like we had an objective methodology for doing it’s very tricky

I think you can if you it later stage ones a little bit easier because you can apply multiples

There’s public comp, you know public comps and you just adjust to that

I think the earlier stage stuff

Very difficult to do objectively and it’s also not that set

You’re probably not as sensitive to it in terms of what it move how it moves a needle

But the growth stuff we try to use public comps and be like realistic

What do you think about let’s just we’ll just throw out some firms just if you had to guess

The next 18 months for some of these folks SoftBank

Vision fund one. I mean, you know, my views on SoftBank have been obvious since I did New York Times of all things interview

2016 you should reread the transcript, but I was like that strategy just does not work

Powering money into companies and hoping that money is the key asset in a key ingredient for success has been

False and in the history of technology for 50 years and so that you know

They lost 27 billion dollars again the brand subprime they used to do well in Latin America

But they got rid of the person who actually knew what he was doing. So this is a catastrophic mess

Plus it has moral issues, you know less moral issues than before but still, you know, not not the best investor tiger. I

Think they have a skill set gap if they’re going to try it from what I read publicly

They’re trying to invest in series a and series B companies the skill to be successful at investing series a and series B companies

Is very different than leading growth rounds or private or public growth rounds

I mean we look at this in our fund and we do both we have a venture fund of 1.8 billion in a growth fund

Of 3.2 billion and we have part the investment team is basically the same

most of the investment team

Maybe all the investment team is better at one or the other and if Tiger thinks that they’re going to be successful series a investors

They’re in for a very rude awakening

I know about five or ten people on the planet that are successful series a investors

It is a very different discipline than deploying capital writ large. Yeah Sequoia

I think you know Sequoia is the best run fund historically

They are really good at what they do

Obviously the world is changing around them like I think like many people crypto

You know is kind of throwing them a little monkey wrench in their model. They have to scale explain that. What do you mean?

They missed the first wave of crypto and crypto, you know

Has returned a decent amount of money for people and so I think that’s tarnished the brand a bit with crypto people specifically

But they’re working on fixing that they have a really good team

The team is aging still pretty well. One of the hardest things in venture is you age non gracefully in this job

You know by the time you’re my age

You’re probably to you’re already past your prime and you know

I kind of compare it because I went to law school with people who are u.s

Senators and I had breakfast in Miami with one of the more prominent u.s

Senators and I said I’m basically getting to the tail end of my career in tech and he said I’ll be the bottom

20% of the youngest 20% in the US Senate and so there’s a big contrast

But anyway, I think I think they’re excellent to what they do. We’re boy for Senate. Sorry. We’re boy for Senate

You might run for Senate. Oh, I’m not running for Senate. No, maybe my husband second career

Take the politics and reason

In crypto, they’re excellent

Missing the last crypto

insanity if this thing does all get torched as it seems to be and

Nobody shipping actual products that touch customers that actually saw problems in the world

Sitting out, you know that crazy

frenetic

moment might actually look astute because

you know some of these projects I

Do not see them shipping products. I think that you’re saying something that’s practically true

But I think Keith is also saying something that is practically true, which is if you’re a fund

That has that crypto deal flow at least my understanding of that playbook is you seed a project

You make sure that you get some amount of the float of tokens

You’re allowed to monetize those tokens very quickly. And so as long as you’re in the flow

There’s money to be made

There’s a lot of money to be made and I think what Keith is saying and this is where it’s a quiet may have made

An excellent decision, which is that form of money-making is not very reliable

And I think that there’s going to be a lot of questions about that. Once there’s a regulatory framework. Yes, and it might

Three points mostly I agree with that

I think first of all, it depends what you think your vision of what a venture fund does or what you do as a partner

So to me, I think I’m in the company building mode. And so people who are not building companies

I’m not really interested in making money. I’m not I’m not in a hedge fund mode

So tokens without successful products and iconic companies aren’t interesting to me, even if they return capital

We did think at founders fund though that all the alpha was in Bitcoin

So going back a decade not me

but my partners bought a lot of Bitcoin and we made a lot of money with Bitcoin because we thought the alpha was there not

In the company building a year or two ago. We started to shift and I think appropriately

I think there may be some alpha now. We’re in the end of one business founders fund meaning the right founder

It’s worth us investing the wrong founder

It’s not and so there are crypto projects and crypto companies where the founder is

Extraordinary and we would love to be the primary investor if we can and then there’s a bunch of other companies that might be successful

But that’s not our business

We are the end of one find the next Eli

Isn’t the fundamental problem that a lot of the way these crypto

Projects are designed is that you don’t have protective provisions preferred shares and the operating system that venture runs on

Nothing and they’re asking you to give them a donation of a hundred million dollars for a token that has some Panamanian

Foundation and you don’t have a board seat. I mean this seems incredibly high-risk and undisciplined

They are they are high risk, but we’re in the business of high risk in some ways like the protective provisions

I think we don’t really care that much about them at founders fund is one of the theses that you know

Peter started the fund with which is these terms are way overrated that ultimately the companies that succeed or the really the Facebook’s the

Palantir’s, you know the SpaceX is that’s where you make your money in this business and worrying about what goes wrong

Is actually words they do have boards and I actually believe in boards

But I believe in boards as being a mentor consigliere not in governance. Of course. Okay, great, but you’re not buying

Chuckie cheese, like I never give a term sheet

I never give a term sheet that has a board provision for me

The founders requires me to join the board got it

But I mean that the tokens are I think are part of the problem that I can’t get my head around

Yes, the issue with tokens a little more structural of when you have liquidity prior to success

That’s not necessarily a good incentive

Like I think success liquidity should follow success with product follow with users follow attraction not be in advance

So what happens to those teams when they get flush with a billion dollars in tokens or a hundred million in tokens?

They wind down the project haven’t shipped the product. Yeah, it has misaligned miss misaligned or bad or perverse incentives all over

Talk about you you’re mentioning in the back

in a moment like this

The people that it’s hardest for right after the entrepreneur is you said the junior partners at these organizations

Just described the dynamic now of having to run an organization where you’re trying to tell people just go to the beach for a year

Yeah

I mean

I think look the way you make sure the way you become successful in venture is you give money to a founder who turns it

Into an iconic company. That is how you get promoted, right?

That’s that’s the job. And so if you tell your colleagues like well, don’t make any investments right now

They’re thinking in the back of the mind. Well, how do I how do I become successful?

So it’s easy for me to say this is easier for Peter to say this is easier for Brian to say this

But it’s not so easy for people who want to make their career to say don’t make any investments

Now that said if you make a lot of bad investments Semel Shah has a good blog post about this

Your portfolio is your career once you make five or ten investments in venture if those aren’t good. You’re never gonna get great

I don’t know

There’s a single example of like a VC who became successful exactly where the first five or seven exactly didn’t show some signs of brilliance

It’s literally the story of the people on the stage right now

Is that we either got lucky or we were good or some combination of the early investments actually hitting?

I’m definitely worse like my first five investments three of them became public companies and stuff like

Definitely worse than I used to I mean I hit two unicorns in the first four. How does it happen?

It’s just luck. I think I do think there’s some luck to it or maybe your network network

So for me, it was easy because these were people that we worked David and I worked with at PayPal

And I was smart enough to at least you know

Follow the people that were launching companies after PayPal and give them some money

So I didn’t have to know much about venture other than just follow my former colleagues

We have to wrap and go to lunch. We’re gonna end with Sachs telling us

his most illustrative and

funny

Story about Keith Raboi. Oh my god from Stanford

You’re so many good ones some great moment with Keith. I

I don’t know

The two of you this is you could you could feel the friendship and all the memories coming through for Sachs right now

All these great I could flip it Keith and maybe since I like the work that Keith and I did at PayPal better

I guess yeah, whatever Stanford PayPal. Give us them. Give us the moment. What do you think of the best stories?

Well one good one that I think is instructive is you know, like I was kind of this opinionated person running around all the time

Probably half right half wrong and David was basically running the company at the time and

I could occasionally sabotage some projects and David had a really good way of reframing and channeling my energy

Which I think is applicable to most people

He’s like basically I don’t mind if you send me any of this feedback

But you have to send it to me

Directly not to other people and then you would like filter it if it’s like if you were like if it’s right

I’ll act on and if not, you know, etc. I’ll debate it with you, but it was actually constructive for the organization

So I felt liberalized

liberal liberalized to basically give the feedback and try to you know

Edit our course and it would be channeled in use useful, but it wasn’t distracting people

And so I think that is something like a lesson

I’ve taken with me that I actually now uses a CEO. I heard I this is what’s so crazy about this

I’ve heard this exact story from Reid Hoffman. Tell me that about you

I think it was either it was either PayPal or at LinkedIn where you would probably say

And it was just like lighting everybody and everything on

I read it like letters from the boy. I reread the emails and I’m like shit. I can’t write that well anymore

Letters from her boy a memoir. Let’s give it up. He’s her boy

Let your winners ride

Rainman David

We open source it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it

I

You