Point of privilege sacks wore this hat last week

What’s this brand? Is this a Montclair hat?

Yeah, and actually did you see that that tweet people it’s trending it started trending after I wore it

So it’s sold out dude, you sold out the Montclair hat. So we have no advertising

We I feel like if we’re not gonna do any advertising on the show

We should at least get free clothes. We get to pick through them. Wear what we like. I know where’s my cut?

Where’s my cut as an influencer the tweet basically said that I named drop Laura Piana and sent it through the roof and then

Saks they’ve dropped Montclair both brands. Obviously our Italian both entrepreneurs. We know very well

And so I asked that I said Matt, can you basically send this tweet over to that?

So maybe they can give us free

Let’s get the grift going boys now. We’re talking now. We got some bestie grits. God. No, you speak in my language

Speaking of grits, I do like Montclair the way that your mouth likes Laura Piano

Just so you guys know at the birthday Jason that you missed

Are we allowed to play poker? We had a birthday. We had a surprise birthday party for me

That through it

sack showed up

Free bird showed up their wives showed up. It was incredible. J. Cal basically stiff army. I’m very sorry

It was a by the way that came together four days before your birthday. So just show you uh-huh

Well, you know what Kevin Hart showed up. Give us the best one liner, which one landed? Oh, no, Jake

Oh, you have no idea. These guys roasted me. It was fucking incredible. But the best of it was at the end

okay, Hart gets up with no preparation and

Skewers everybody free bird. I mean deep. What do you think of like Kevin’s rose Carter? He was so funny

he’s like my wife walked in here and she looks at me and she’s like

These these guys

I think but it was so funny. He dropped a line. Of course. Well, he’s a ringer. He’s a professional

Well, he’s maybe the funniest person in the world and then sacks had to come after. Yeah, exactly

Xander I don’t know why Xander was the MC but because I was a save Kevin Hart for last

But instead he calls up K Hart in the middle. That’s was so tilted

Okay, so wait, so I couldn’t make you because I had burning man

The Xander does the emceeing then Kevin Hart you were saying is just to fill in the audience here so they can understand it

Kevin Hart comes in he gives this incredible ad-lib roast and then sacks has to go after him. Yeah

First of all Xander’s is funny. That’s a great bag. What a sandbag

Xander’s as funny as a root canal. He should not have been the MC. So yes, we did miss you Jake

You should have been the MC second K Hart should have been left for last obviously worse, but

Xander being a good liberal couldn’t

Censor me outright. So he had me go after K Hart. That’s like the next best thing. Did you steal his documents?

Did you steal all his jokes and put them in your I just threw I had all these like jokes written

I just threw him out the window because I can’t what am I gonna do?

I’m not gonna deliver jokes after Kevin Hart. So I just told a story, you know, Kevin Hart like killed

I mean the room was I mean, that’s like that’s like getting punched by Mike Tyson being like, oh my god that hurt

It’s like shits Mike Tyson

We were at

The the code conference we had the poker game was the last one after 20

Shut up to Kara Swisher big shot. I want to say to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher

Because they did the conference many years together. Congratulations on a 20-year run

They’re not gonna do it. Okay, I was not gonna do it next year

But my friend Jim bank off who runs Vox is gonna run it next year

So congratulations to him and Cara for a great run and all things deep

They you know, they they they had Steve Jobs at the first one first speaker and you can look it up

I got to ask him a question Jake. Oh, I don’t know if you remember this, but you and I were there when

gates and jobs

Did that speech together?

Unbelievable. What what an incredible legacy that she documented this code code is incredible

Like I mean the number of the amount of memories I have from that place is incredible

It’s great. And so we’ll see where the poker game goes next year

Probably the only time I think the all-in summit could have been that it’s it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking

I’m not saying that I’ll be hosting the code conference next year, but

You know, they’re looking for an impresario

this is the problem with this pot is we’re drawing too many high-profile people in now, but

Interestingly freeberg and I we now have the press

Wants the the press are trying to do a profile of the pod

And so we had three or four different press outlets now

I would say which ones but have all asked us to do like a sit for a profile. We’ve said no

But just because why don’t we do a profile of them who’s to make them the media, you know?

Well, I mean

Our competitors want to do a piece on us. Why would we cooperate?

You know, it’s gonna be a hit a hit piece. It’d probably be hippies. Yeah, of course because we’re we’re stealing

Influence and clicks and views away from them

It’s done besides they’re ideologically motivated anyway, so they’re they’re message police sex. You don’t think you’re ideologically motivated

Listen if you contradict the official narrative, then they write a hit piece about you. That’s how they try to enforce discipline

But not that is true. It’s I like the independent ones

I do have to say like this whole, you know

Substack movement in independent artists or independent journalists becoming even more indie. In fact, Kara Swisher is more Indian now

She left the New York Times

Specifically because they were you know, giving her a hard time about certain guests or certain conversations and now she’s you know

Doing her pockets independently with Vox publishing it for her

So you see more and more of the voices go independent New Republic is doing a hit piece on me right now

I have no idea why

Me and I CC them and I was like, here’s my official comment

I can’t wait to visit sacks when he’s in the White House in 20 years and the guys like so you’re saying sacks is writing

For a president. I’m saying no. I’m saying that you don’t understand a joke. That was a joke

Yeah, and then and then after you copied me then they’re like, oh, yeah

We were reaching out to David to to get in. No, yeah, and they hadn’t reached out to you yet, right?

I had it reached out. Anyway, so they were going a little sneaky sneak. They were trying to get me

It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time. I don’t have time to talk to them

You know looks a nice that would be a nice profile. I think nobody reads

I think it’s not what it used to be if it were if it were Michael Kinsley running the New Republic

I’d be happy to you know, take the time, but it’s not that anymore. It’s just another left-wing rag that’s into policing speech

You know, they asked they sent us a bunch of questions like, you know, why questions?

Well, I don’t I don’t have them in front of me

but they’re like they’re basically like why did you support the recall of Jason Boudin stuff like that and

My you know PR person got back to him and said have you seen the all-in pod?

Have you read David’s like Twitter because he explained this like abundantly for the two years

He was advocating every week. We talked about we talked about this. There’s a

Sitting there in the transcripts, right? He’s like, oh

He talked about in the pod. He the guy didn’t listen to the pot. He’s like he tweeted about this

No, he just thinks I’m like some right-wing donor who was like trying to get chase it kicked out that kind of narrative

You know, so I’m like this is a total waste of my time

Go read all my tweets go watch the all-in pod and then come back with any questions. I haven’t been answered

It’s this lazy reporting on the New Republic’s part. Why would you do a profile if you didn’t actually?

You are having a serious conversation while free bird is fucking around with his background. What is his background? What is that?

It’s a future city in Saudi Arabia. Who else is planning on doing a hit piece about us. Okay, so the information

reached out and

We said no

Actually on the show right now, I guess I think this way we should deal with all inbound press inquiries

This will tell him no and then discuss it on the pod

If they want to quote

Listen to our pod and then transcribe what we say on this pod or reverse it

My quote for the New Republic is that if Michael Kinsley were still the editor

I’d be happy to spend my valuable time talking to you, but he’s not

Fair profile, of course, it’s not gonna be fair. There are the speech police now

And the fact he didn’t even know the fact he didn’t even know that

I wasn’t just a donor on the chase of Boudin thing. I was the first person that I’m aware of

At least within Silicon Valley who called out chaser Boudin for the horrible job. He was I mean if that was bipartisan, by the way

It’s not like David Sachs is one of the 3% of San Franciscans who are Republican

Like he’s not able to vote for the 69% of people who voted Chesa Boudin out

So like you can’t spin that one. You’re categorizing me as like just a partisan. That’s not really how I come at these issues

Can we go back to your quotes? So that was your comment for New Republic J Cal

Do you have a comment for New York Times? And then no, it started with Eric

I got the affairs Eric newcomer who’s awesome who worked at the information started his own sub stack

Which is really good, by the way, and he comes on my other pod. He’s awesome

And so I’m gonna be a guest on his pod because I promised him and he does my pot

But I’m not gonna be a guest my philosophy is I told him I said you can have me as a guest

But it can’t be more than 10% all in because I don’t want it to become an all-in profile

We agreed as a group. We’re not doing an all-in profile right now

So up to 10% can be about all in but the other 90% has got to be my other projects and he said totally fine

Um, he understands but he asked first and actually I would be inclined to do with him because he’s if we were gonna do it

But then what do they need?

I mean like we create like hours and hours of content and the drama’s out here for everybody to like

I don’t understand. Like what is what do you need our cooperation? I think you want to know you want to maybe frame

And get a couple sleep

No, you want you just want to get a couple of quotes that are unique so that it’s worth reading

These poor guys have shoved their heads up each other’s asses. Oh, it’s like a it’s like a serpent

Wow, I’ve never hunted serpents. You’re clear up here

Clean bill of health sacks. So anyway, Eric newcomer asked and then the information and then Kevin

No, the New York Times just asked right Kevin Ruiz. Oh, yeah. What was a nice in your time?

That’s right your comment my comment in there times is

Yeah, I enjoyed the pod while it lasts we’re trying to keep it together

I mean, I’ll say the other big issue is I got approached by a couple of by two different people who wanna

Who want to represent the pod?

They say there’s seven and a half million dollars in advertising. We’re leaving on the table by the way 150 a week good

To 10 million

Killing me you realize I would have a plane if you guys just let me sell the fucking heads on this thing

I could get like a half dollars in jets. Yeah, you would have a plane if you just one other thing

You’re doing actually different things just do one thing. I’ll tell you what it is. You’d have a plane if you’re smarter

That’s not that’s not nice sex that’s not nice I would have a plane if I got luckier

I will say whoever said this is gonna help our core businesses. And that’s the reason I think might have been you tomorrow. I

am raising my fourth fund I

Am doing it 506 e which is public I tweeted about it. I had 1200 people

sign up for the webinar and

This means I might have to increase the size of my fourth venture fund because so many people

Listen to this pod and want to hang out. So thank you to everybody who listens to the pot

I think for you, bro

I mean, it’s just nice, you know, I you know, I struggled to raise the first couple funds

You guys backed me, but like I couldn’t break through as a solo GP

With that with the big LPS, but I’m hoping to get one big LP this time

And you know, it’s I’m gonna be oversubscribed with all the high net worth individuals and everything

But I’d like to get like a memorial Sloan-Kettering or somebody doing cancer research just to feel good about it

You know, I just want to say that I supported J Cal as a friend

In fact, I was the first LP check in your fund, but that does not mean that I endorsed in any way in any way

Anybody else to come in I mean, whatever you’re I don’t want to say the performance, but you’re doing okay

Let’s leave it at that. Yeah, and I would like you say that I was not the first but I was the biggest

You did you did pretty big. Yeah, absolutely

And I will say that I’m still waiting for that moment to join you guys in jail

Yeah, exactly

Yeah, and I’ll just keep coming to your LP meetings and entertaining your thanks pal

Entertaining wait is Jake on an investor in production board. No, we did we have done we’ve done a syndicate together

You are you are my smallest investor you

Let’s get to work guys

The Queen the passing of the Queen real quick before we start or is that I would like to yeah

I was born in Sri Lanka. I was raised in Canada. So and now I live in the United States

Obviously, I’ve been a citizen of all three countries. So two of the three countries

I’ve been a subject

To the Queen I mean, I’m part of the Commonwealth and I just want to say

It was really sad for me like these last couple of days when I would saw that she was sick

and then she had passed I

Gotta be honest with you. Like it really touched me. She is an

Incur I can’t describe to you guys

For someone who is part of that realm how important she is as a person and then you know, if you’ve seen you know the

the show on Netflix it kind of

Romanticizes a little bit but you know, she has seen 17 prime ministers. She’s seen so many presidents

She has seen the history of the world

The modern world being made in front of her

So yeah, I’m a little sad and I think she’s an incredible person and even if you don’t agree

Necessarily with monarchies in general. I think you have to be super positive or the history of imperialism

There’s a lot of people that are kind of using this moment to be negative, right?

Jamaica wants to become a republic. Australia wants to become a republic. They’ll prosecute that in due time

But for right now, I just think that we have to celebrate this

Incredible woman who lived to an incredible age who saw incredible things and who dedicated her entire life

To the public service and lived it totally neutrally which in today’s world

Nobody else does everybody else takes the point of the point

Everybody else everybody else tries to basically like, you know, create a schism

She never did that in 70 years as the Queen

Yeah, like very stoic very stoic in a symbol of service not a symbol of dictatorship, right?

I mean there seems to be a very different role that she’s taken as a monarch then I think what yeah has maybe historically been

the role

Which is incredible pretty profound, right? It’s extraordinary that somebody would put 70 years of service and be that diligent

And I think stoic and in there for her people and to the people who are you know suffering and grieving, you know

That word you said really resonated with me like diligent is such a great word because it’s like you’re disciplined

You put in hard work. You’re focused on the long-term goal and then you’re selfless

Yes, not many people not many people Jake out

You know this exhibit that at all, but then definitely don’t exhibit it over 70 years

It’s it’s extraordinary and yeah, it’s I know a lot of people are grieving right now

So you have somebody as a citizen of the monarchy? I am of the Commonwealth rather

I am pro Queen Elizabeth and it deeply saddens me to see that she passed away. All right, listen, we got to talk about

Winter is coming. I’m not talking about Game of Thrones. Let’s talk about something serious that’s going on here

and we don’t like to be too repetitive here, but I think

we correctly

Predicted that you know this if this Ukraine, I think maybe sacks you pointed this out of this. You know, what do you mean?

We came Osabi

All right. Listen, I’m trying to give you fucking credit and you interrupted me. Can you just take the fucking win?

You’re such a miserable bastard. I try to give you one fucking finish finish what you’re saying and you cut me off

All right. Listen, we’ve been talking about this Ukraine thing sacks correctly predicted if this goes to winter

this is

Going to get acute and of course right on cue here

We have it. Russia has essentially cut off gas to Europe right now by

Claiming that the Nord Stream one the north pipeline that Russia built that goes under the Baltic Sea

They basically say a turbines broken in it

Magically at this point in time right before winter this turbine broke according to Putin and he needs a turbine

And if they give him a turbine he said he’s gonna turn it back on

This in the face of Europe saying they were gonna cap the price of Russian gas

I don’t know how that works exactly that you tell people what they can charge for gas

But Russian gas shipments, which Germany is particularly

Dependent on have fallen 89% since last year and the price of liquefied natural gas in Europe is

Four times level a year ago in eight times the level of the US

obviously we are have gotten incredibly lucky to find all this natural gas here and we are a huge exporter of

Natural gas and oil in the United States, so we’re good

this is the highest power prices have been in three decades and

The perfect storm is not limited to oil and the Russia and the Ukraine war

France’s 56 nuclear power plants are running at half-strength

Because of shutdowns over corrosion problems and as we talked about maybe two episodes droughts have undermined hydroelectric power

Because of these that’s not the main issue here. The main issue is the well

This is there is a perfect storm here. It’s not just that 40% of Europe’s

Energy consumption comes from Russian natural gas

40% and so you could see variance

There’s a base load requirement for lighting and electricity and then there’s industrial production and then there’s heating and cooling

Heating and cooling demand is linearly tied to the number of degrees above or below 65 Fahrenheit on average

And so as the temperature goes up people turn air conditioners on as the temperature goes below 65

They turn their heaters on so there’s a linear demand for power consumption at those

so number one is you could kind of you could either cut base load, which is lighting and basic kind of

Operations number two is cut industrial production

Which is already happening a lot of fertilizer plants are shutting down in the country that are dependent on natural in the in the continent

That are dependent on natural gas

And number three is the school at heating and cooling and that really ends up being kind of a market driven function

Which is how pricey is this stuff because there’s limited supply

So you could normally in a normal year see fluctuations around 5 10 15 percent

Maybe with good kind of action and behavior

40% of energy being cut is a massive massive

Problem there will be significant price climbs for the kind of variable demand and heating and cooling and so on

But for the price to go up by 6x 7x 8x 10x 15x over normal prices for someone

Is unbearable by the average household unbearable by the average small business unbearable by the average small building

And so it’s causing critical failure

across the economy

across the currencies across debt markets

And there’s real concern that ultimately the shutting off of 40% of the energy supply

To the continent leading into winter winter is coming where energy demand spikes because of the need for heating is

Going to cause real kind of problems. So there’s the cataclysmic problem of people actually being able to heat their homes

There’s the industrial problem of parts of the economy shutting down and then there’s the currency

Problem of the government’s needing to step in and bail out industry buy super expensive gas

Give it to their citizens and their businesses at a discounted price and seeing their national and sovereign debts skyrocket

which is now expected to happen and as a result, the British pound is trading at its lowest level since

1985 and as a result people are rushing to the street from Prague to Cologne Germany even in London

Proclaiming that the government’s aren’t doing enough number one to stall the the rate of inflation to make energy prices cheaper through action

By having the government subsidized and number three, which I think was inevitable and is now becoming kind of the surprise factor to the Ukraine crisis

Citizens are saying end this war now

Get to the table with Russia come up with a settlement and get the heck out of the Ukraine, by the way

That’s not everyone saying it just to be clear, but there is this rising

Rioting protesting behavior happening across Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe as a result of the Ukraine war

And so we’re seeing you know

I think a big shift in attitude and a big shift in kind of the societal perception of this war

Particularly in Europe because they’re so acutely feeling the effects and we are not in the u.s

They’re acutely feeling the effects and they’re saying we need to stop this war now. We need to get out of the way

We need to let Russia turn the gas pipeline back on and we need to figure out a resolution

Stop supporting Ukraine. And that’s a voice. That was that’s a voice that did not exist very loudly

Yeah at the beginning and it’s and it’s starting to swell

Running out of food or you know running out of heat to keep your kids warm. I mean, these are pretty acute situations

What’s the vibe in the Middle East about this? Are they looking at it and seeing it as an opportunity?

Are they looking at it and seeing it as?

You know a manageable crises and what do they consider their participation in this to be?

There’s a very structured framework for energy production, which is OPEC and OPEC plus and

You know

They have done

not just the Middle East but frankly the Middle East plus

The United States the best job possible to basically get the maximum demand so that there’s as much energy as possible

The reasons that Europe are in an energy crisis really should be discussed

Honestly, so number one

an entire continent

Essentially allowed a 16 year old girl to dictate their energy policy

and when Greta Thunberg was able to shame an

entire continent into basically

Walking away from nuclear and not really evaluating how you can actually have energy independence

What they did was they put Europe in an incredibly fragile position and

At the beginning of this war. It wasn’t clear

How much damage the lack of Russian energy would do to the European economy, but now it’s absolutely clear

How did you not see that?

We said it on the credit. We said it on the pod in February. How did they not?

I mean Trump said it years ago. I mean the first thing we said, how is it not obvious?

The problem is you had these look to be honest

You had these two goofballs

You had a goofball on the left, which was a 16 year old girl who knew nothing and you had a goofball on the right

Which is a president whose language turned people off

Even though the message that he was delivering was a hundred percent right when when Trump went to the United Nations

He was clear. He was precise and in hindsight, and I’m saying this as a Democrat. He was right

Oh about the German reliance on Russian gas and and the European reliance on gas

What did they think would happen?

The important thing was was the reaction remember that German delegation snickering while he was laughing

They were laughing but but we’re but we’re missing the real lesson

the real lesson is that in all of our haste to basically

Overtly judge Trump because of his delivery and his you know, his personal style or whatever

We ran towards a 16 year old person who has no rooting in science or technology

To dictate the energy policy of an entire continent. I mean the she was nominated for a Nobel Prize

Just to remind you guys

This is how insane all of these people were so in an effort to virtue signal to the hilt and beyond

What we essentially did what the entire world did was turn a blind eye to science

And turn a blind eye to mathematics and simple understanding of supply and demand and so now you have a situation where

The entire continent of Europe is probably on the precipice of and the minimum of recession

but frankly, there’s a lot of scenarios where it could be meaningfully worse and

I think what it does is ultimately it is forced the Russian endgame and

that Russian endgame is essentially the following which is that

Germany

will probably be the first to capitulate but

It’ll be the combination of the United States in Europe who negotiate some kind of a settlement

They have to fall and and the reason well without calling it folding

I would just say there’s a settlement and the reason the settlement is necessary is you’re gonna start to impact

tens of millions of people’s lives in an

Incredibly arduous way and

those people are

Asking their leaders to tell them why it’s worth it. That’s why you’re seeing

protests all around Europe

people have decided that this war has gotten two or three steps beyond what they thought they were getting into and

that it was

Shining light on a whole set of decisions that never should have been made sacks

What’s I think what people most want to know and I’ll go to Fribourg after sex Fribourg

I think people gonna want to know

How do they close this gap in terms of the 40% dependency so you can start thinking about that

But sacks, how do we resolve this issue with Russia without enabling them because nobody wants to enable them and reward them for evading countries

but here we are they didn’t settle this thing in the whatever nine months we’re in now and

They don’t have any more cards to play. They need heat. They need

People can’t freeze to death in Germany

So they’re gonna have to fold in some way and it doesn’t seem like there’s any gap that can be closed here in terms

There’s not enough firewood to go around. It’s all these stories about stockpiling firewood. That doesn’t seem practical

Sure, you could reduce consumption by 10 20, maybe 25 percent that does seem reasonable, but there’s still a huge gap here

So so what’s the endgame sacks? I mean, well first just just to put some numbers on this

There’s a good report by Goldman Sachs called Europe’s energy

Crisis is at a tipping point this came out on September 8th

And it says here that the price of natural gas in Europe

It used to just be 20 euros per megawatt hour. It’s now above 200 per megawatt hour

So we’re at 10 times the 10-year average in the market and winter isn’t even here

So, you know Europe is the Titanic winter is the iceberg

The main difference between this and the Titanic story is that everyone can see the iceberg and yet no one is really changing course

So Liz trust the new prime minister of the UK so that Ukraine can depend on UK for support in the long term

Olaf Schultz said that Germany will support Ukraine as long as it takes

Macron, you know from France so that NATO will stand together and prevent Russia from winning the war

So, you know leader after leader is doing the opposite of what you and and Chamath have just said

Which is try to figure out a compromise

in fact in the last week or so new information came out about actions Boris Johnson took

Back in March or April when there was remember when there was discussion about a peace deal about a month into the war

It turns out that Boris Johnson went to Ukraine and said no deal do not take the deal

We need to weaken Putin and Russia not compromise with them

so the fact of the matter is that

The European leaders are increasingly out of touch with their own people

The agenda they are serving is not the agenda of or the desire of their people

To basically stay warm in the winter or pay reasonable energy bills. They are serving this larger foreign policy agenda

This is why you’re seeing people in the streets in Czechoslovakia and these other countries and this is why the crisis will only grow in

Winter I think you guys are just assuming there’s gonna be a compromise. I’m not sure that’s true. These leaders are stubborn

So this is why for example, we’ve already now seen in the UK Boris Johnson

Lost power, although listrust basically has the same policy

Mario Draghi has basically lost in Italy at Bulgaria replaced their PM

So the leaders the dominoes are starting to fall in Europe and I think there’s gonna be a lot more of this and who knows what?

Governments we’re gonna end up with in Europe. What’s the endgame then? I mean, what do you what do you predict will happen?

You think they’re gonna hold their ground and not have a compromise. So Chamath pointed out the mistakes that

These leaders made following Greta Thunberg

I think there’s another mistake they’ve made which is I think all of these leaders have pulled a Tony Blair

Do you remember Tony Blair? Tony Blair was the Bill Clinton of the UK after Margaret Thatcher

He was the first Labour PM to get elected

He was incredibly talented as a politician and he was very popular in the UK until he did one thing

You know what that one thing was?

He went along with George W Bush’s

Iraq war the people of the UK did not want to get involved in that war and Blair acted as W’s

lapdog and went along with it and bought into all of the lies about that war and

Today he has zero credibility in the UK. It’s really actually a sad story

I think that these European leaders are making a similar kind of mistake with respect to Biden’s proxy war against Russia

Now, let’s go back. I want to go back to a point you made Jason just an L. Let’s turn to free bird

Which is you talked about the fig leaf that the Russians are blaming this on a turbine

I don’t think that’s even really true anymore. I mean the Russians of course is lying. Of course. Yeah

yeah, but but I think the Russians have basically said that

That listen, this is about your sanctions. It’s not sanctions. It’s sanctions and a turbine. It’s like pick one, right?

But but the point I’m trying to make it look obviously this is retaliation by the Russians. The problem is the stupidity of

Western leaders in not thinking there’s gonna be retaliation

I mean all you’re hearing right now from Western leaders is indignation that Russia would play

The only card they have the card that was obvious they were gonna play, you know

Meanwhile, look at what we’ve done

So you’ve got administration officials

Talking about the fact that we have commandos on the ground in Ukraine

You’ve got administration officials bragging about the fact that we are helping to paint targets on the backs of Russian generals

so they can be killed you have administration officials boasting about providing the

Artillery spotting so we could sink the Moscow the the Russian flagship. I’ll provide receipts for all these things

Okay, you’ve got Biden saying that Putin cannot remain in power. You’ve got Lindsey Graham saying

Let’s go forward how does it resolve you’ve got Lindsey Graham saying these be assassinated like Caesar

You’ve got the u.s. Appropriate 40 billion to hold on a second in weapons to Ukraine. So my point is this okay?

The u.s. And the Western Alliance, they are doing everything in Ukraine except pulling the triggers

Okay, they are doing the attack

Okay, so the point is we are in a proxy war with Russia

Yeah, what did you expect was gonna happen?

These leaders are not going to play what should happen going forward. Hold on. So you’re in the review forget about playing chess

They’re not even playing checkers meaning they cannot even anticipate what the Russians are gonna do next

It was imminently predictable imminently predictable that the Russians were going to turn off European gas and create this crisis

So what should they have done what they should have done was work out a bus deal

I know that but we’re kind of repeating the same position you have every week here. I’m trying to get to going forward

So free bird, what should we do going forward here both on an energy basis and a political basis?

That’s the thing I get the sort of breakdown of what occurred here in your position sacks

But what do you think free bird should happen going forward? How do we say there’s an acute energy shortfall?

You can’t just make that up. You can’t convert oil into natural gas to heat people’s homes

It’s impossible structurally right now in the time frame that it’s needed. So what should the u.s?

What should the EU be doing now that they’re not doing?

Yeah, I think that there’s gonna be this inevitability that we’re gonna need to broker a deal with Russia and

There’s and what I think you’ll see over the next couple of months particularly because winter is coming

is you need to

There’s gonna be a lot of saving face. And so I think I’ve always said from the beginning

I think that Putin’s calculus is to go as far and as deep as he can go

so that he could eventually negotiate himself back out in a way that leaves him with what he originally wanted in the first place and

I think that there are certain strategic regions and certain strategic assets that it’s pretty clear and evident

He wanted and if he’s gotten enough in addition to that

He can give up the additional part and he can get sanctions lifted and he can turn gas back on and be left with what

He actually wanted and ultimately get out of this thing

And then the sick the face saving will be from the West will be hey, we got him to give up this

We got him to give up this we got him to agree to non-incursion and there’ll be some sort of you know

Hey, we got Putin knocked down a bit and you know, we got him out of there. We did it

We won high five meanwhile Putin smiling because he got exactly what he wanted

I think that’s where this is all gonna end up over the next several months

I think that’s that’s if it doesn’t there’s gonna be significant writing and civil unrest in Europe and

and there will be a significant significant economic effect because so much of Germany and so much of the broader continent is

Dependent on a stable low cost or lower enough cost energy supply for the production of things that are produced in Europe

And if those things can’t be produced profitably because the end market won’t pay for it

The economy will be shattered

Economies will be shattered and people will be really unhappy

Food will climb and the currency will be destroyed and you know what happens when currencies get destroyed all

Imports become inflated in price and then you have inflation if there isn’t a resolution in the next few weeks

There will be civil unrest. There will be a really cataclysmic concerning economic effect

And you think that forces the government’s to just fold to Putin and give him some yeah

We don’t know for sure is what are they gonna do from a face-saving move perspective?

What are they gonna say the Ukraine or the the West Alliance Ukraine?

We are gonna have to plow so much money into the Ukraine

To make them feel okay about what we’re gonna ask them to do in order to remove

or to end the crisis and so there’s gonna be this huge check this huge investment in Ukraine the Western investment in Ukraine the

Support mechanism for the country for the people left behind in order to get this thing resolved

And so my guess is huge amount of money from the West and EU going into Ukraine

Ukraine agrees to let Putin keep some regions some assets

Putin agrees to remove himself from certain regions and give up certain assets sanctions are partially lifted

But they’re partially lifted enough to get the flow of gas going and to get the economy turning again

Chamath any final thoughts here as we turn around their base here on this of

Lessons learned and how to avoid this you may

You may you may want to find a clip Nick from July where I said the tip of the spear in the fall was going

To be the European energy crisis

Oil is at a hundred and five bucks a barrel. Russia is basically trying to break the back of

Europe by now messing with their nat gas supplies

The German energy minister yesterday said that if that happens it could be a contagion equivalent to Lehman Brothers

With respect to energy

You’re already starting to see food riots food insecurity energy insecurity rampant inflation

sovereign defaults and

you have to ask yourself like how are we going to really tourniquet this whole thing and prevent a

Much bigger contagion like free bird just talked about if Russia decides to play hardball against

Europe or America

We better hope that it’s a mild winter because very quickly you can go from plus 1 million barrels to minus 2 and in a heartbeat

yeah, my final thoughts are the following which is that I think that the

European

System is going to be put under stress because there are really a bunch of different countries with very different incentives right now

Where some countries are in desperate need of energy some countries can probably stave it off for a little bit longer

Other countries are so adamantly focused on their position on

Russia over and above

Any source of energy that they may need or don’t have

so I just think like this is a really good point to take a step back and realize that in

all of these conflicts

Sadly whenever you have like all of these very complicated countries fighting very complicated wars

it’s really important to understand what these trade-offs are because ultimately what we’re learning in Europe is that

Irrespective of what you morally and ethically believe is right in the Ukraine

The minute that it affects you and Jason you’ve said this what is it? Like you’re only one meal away from a revolution

So yeah, and I think it would be you’re only like five days away from having no heat before people right on the street

It’s probably a tad but but that but that’s the lesson which is that at the end of the day it is

When you’re in a position of comfort you can focus on

forward-and-outlooking

moral

attributes and ethical perspectives that matter

But the minute that you are affected at home where you cannot take care of your children or heat your house

all bets are off and I think this just goes to show you that

If you’re going to sort of engage in proactive foreign policy

You need to make sure that domestically you don’t have any Achilles heels and Europe had a massive Achilles heel

Which is energy and then you know the minute that they were well, they stress tested it

Basically, they’re gonna have to take this much more seriously going into the next year because they’ve enabled a madman

That is the dominant narrative. There is a simplistic binary that has been set up that this is a war between

Autocracy and democracy and that’s all there is to it

And my point is that this conflict has always been more complicated than that

okay, and if you really want to understand this conflict you have to go back and understand the history of it and

You know the American media and the British media

They basically act as if this whole thing began on February 24th for a good example of this. There was an excellent piece by

William Perry who is Bill Clinton’s?

Defense secretary. Okay. He said how the u.s. Lost Russia and how we can restore

Relations and he talks about how we can chart a way forward for peace

Which I think is your question what Perry points out remember again?

He was Clinton’s defense secretary in the 1990s. He almost resigned in protest

over NATO expansion eastward

this was basically a contradiction of the verbal assurances that James Baker and and

President George Herbert Walker Bush had given Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO one inch eastward in any event

that’s when NATO expansion began was the late 90s Perry was against it because like George Kennan like

Former ambassador to the Soviet Union James Matlock. He understood that it would be provocative

It would be seen as a provocative move by Russia. Okay, he was against that policy

The other thing he points out is that in the 1990s the Russian economy collapsed because they moved off of

Soviet system and we did absolutely nothing to help them as a result of that

We bred the conditions for a strong man to emerge who basically

Prioritized the restoration of Russian pride dignity and strength

Okay, so he points out the ways that our policies helped create Putin

I think what he basically suggests in terms of the way forward is look we have to realize that the security architecture of

Europe was crafted in the late 90s and early 2000s at a time when Russia was flat on its back

Okay, what are the Russians basically demanding? What were their demands prior to this war? There were two things

They really didn’t like okay. Number one was they didn’t know what their doorstep we’ve been on

They didn’t want Ukraine admitted to NATO and then number two is they didn’t want American missiles

Right on their border that could hit Moscow in five minutes

Okay

those were their two demands the fact the matter is we never were willing to negotiate at all on those two demands at all and

Instead we basically just claims they were a pretext by the Russians for an invasion. Well look

We never earned the right to call those a pretext if you want to call them a pretext you take those issues off the table

Then if the Russians invade, you know, they’re liars

The truth of matter is we refused

We never played that move and so I’ll never know I don’t disagree with you about that point

Okay, the big lesson here is they need the you the European Union needs to learn

I want to keep going with this because I think this issue is so much deeper

Okay, listen, one of the problems we have in this country is that when a war

Doesn’t work out. We just ghost it. We never talk about Afghanistan anymore

We never talk about Iraq anymore. We understand they were gigantic mistakes, but who is analyzing why they happened?

Who’s responsible for the failure the fact the matter is there’s been no accountability the same people who drove our

Disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East are the same people who have driven our Ukraine policy in Eastern Europe

There is no military concept. Not just that is the foreign policy elite in this country. Okay

Yeah, okay, so my point is this and you’re it sounds to me like you’re willing to now say what compromise can we find to

Get out of this war. Okay, my way since I’m gonna try and avoid war from the beginning

I do think we did not play the piece of hey if NATO is not here if we don’t let them in NATO

And we take that off the table

Will you move these troops back from the border and who we don’t know if they ever offered that or not

But I know we do now actually there was there was new information that came out of the last couple of weeks

Okay, obviously they should have offered that. I mean, the real issue here is dependency on

Dictators for energy because if he if he did not have the ability to yank that gas chain if he didn’t have that Nord

He would be neutered right? Okay, but we knew that we knew that so so if you’re playing

You’re not even saying it accurately

If he didn’t have Nord it’s that doesn’t exist without an entire other counterparty agreeing to I agree if Germany

Had kept their nukes going and if they had made other plans, perhaps with them, okay, but

Or the United States. I mean, we don’t forget Biden canceled our energy independence the first day. He was in office

It doesn’t matter that it’s a dictator on the other side. There is a dependency on the other side and that’s an issue

I’m in for energy and dependence since the beginning. I’ve been talking about nuclear since the beginning for decades

I’ve been talking but Jake out one of the challenges is if everyone creates

Independency on all of their supply, then there is no export market for countries that benefit from exports because they have a surplus

And so we see this around the world with food with energy with manufacturing

China a bad thing with oil. That’d be a good thing with oil, wouldn’t it China? There was no market for it?

If there was no market for oil than a lot of less

A lot of countries that do not have energy stocks

Locally would not be able to acquire energy stocks

Locally would not be able to acquire energy stocks. And so a more free

More does it make sense if you if you’re saying if we lowered our use of oil

That would make it cheaper, which means that developing countries would pay less

Jacob, just just let me finish my point for one second

In every country you are either an importer or an exporter

You’re an importer of manufactured goods or an exporter of manufactured goods. You’re an importer of energy

You’re an exporter of energy an importer of food and exporter of food

It doesn’t matter and we often use this as a way to characterize

The leadership of these countries as being bad when we end up in conflict with them

It doesn’t matter that this person is that there’s an autocracy on the other side

Or if there’s a democracy on the other side at the end of the day

If there’s a global trade agreement, if there’s a supply agreement and that supply agreement gets broken

It’s both parties faults for being dependent on the supply agreement and then allowing conflict

I don’t think what you’re saying is accurate and i’ll explain why

um reasonable parties

um

Who are democracies?

If they get into a trade dispute generally do not invade each other’s country. So that’s where your argument breaks down

It would be absolutely fantastic. If the lesson the european union learned here was let’s not be dependent

What did the united states do to have autocrats? Hold on. Hold on. What did the united states do to iraq?

Okay, did we not invade those countries? I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the dependency

You said that democracies do not invade and libya

I said we did two democracies two democracies that are in a trade war are generally not going to invade each other

We invaded afghanistan. Actually, that’s 9 11. Okay, and the the first iraq war we invaded we protected. Um

Kuwait, right and so, you know

I’m not here to justify every war the united states has been in i’m just talking about in this situation

The eu lowering their dependency and if you were going to lower your dependency on any country you’d start with the autocratic ones

You’d start with the dictatorships. It’s not not logical to you friedberg

There’s a neoliberal view. Hold on a second. There was a neoliberal view. I’d say courted neoliberalism

It’s called economic interdependence theory, which is that as nations become more interdependent with each other

They’re less likely to go to war. China was the perfect example, right?

What’s the perfect example there was also a belief that as china became richer

They become more democratic that hasn’t worked out

So well, i’d say economic interdependence theory hasn’t worked out so well either

So this is a core failing now you’re modifying the theory to say well only economic interdependence among democracy is fine

But that was not the view that was not the view for the last 20 years. It was a core

If we make ourselves dependent on these other countries then somehow it’s going to lead to peace

No, it actually has just led to dependency. It was a foolish policy

We should have been energy independent europe should have been energy independent. They should not have made them

I do agree that it was foolish. We’re in agreement. Yes, you’re disagreeing

No, no, i’m not disagreeing with february. I think but but by the way

I’m not i’m not a proponent of people not being energy independent

The reason I think people can be energy independent today is because of technology like nuclear

And I think that all these every country in the world should find a way to get energy independent

I’m also an advocate of global trade. I am an advocate because I think that global trade enables economic progress

It allows the consumer to get the cheapest product possible

And for the producer to find a market for the products that they make and that there’s an element of this which is energy

But energy doesn’t need to be a trade traded market as much anymore because of technology

Manufactured goods food. We still haven’t cracked the nut on

We are then in agreement freeberg. Yeah

This is sort of an ancillary point, but I just want to say that historically there’s been no basis for believing in economic interdependence theory

If you go back to world war one germany and the uk were each other’s largest trading partners before world war one

Didn’t stop them from getting into war world war two

I think russia’s biggest trading partner was germany up until the moment when hitler invaded them

So listen economic interdependence has never has never madman

It doesn’t yeah, but the point is there’s very little historical basis for believing that economic interdependence prevents wars

Which by the way that really speaks to the foolishness of our china policy

But look, this is sort of a science question sacks though with it with the china policy because I think this is a very important

discussion we’ve discovered which is

Energy independence is one thing and then you have trade which is another and does this actually push off wars?

Do we actually know that we?

We might have actually pushed off a war with china because we make iphones together

Could we have been in a conflict earlier if we weren’t so independent and have we actually pushed out a potential conflict?

With taiwan, etc

The interdependence with the benefit of hindsight what we can see

With the benefit of hindsight what we can see is that our chinese policy of interdependency really was called constructive engagement

Was a complete and unmitigated disaster. Why?

It was because we made china rich

You go back to the beginning of deng xiaoping beginning getting his economic reforms the average chinese made two dollars a day

Now their economy is roughly the same size as ours

And how are they using their newfound economic wealth to build up their military their navy?

They’re basically militarizing the south china sea. They’re basically being aggressive towards their neighbors

We fed that chinese tiger until it became a dragon that was capable of challenging us

For global preeminence. That was a foolish foolish strategy. The fact the matter is

That and listen, this is a mistake that economists make is that they only look at whether trade creates surplus as opposed to

the distribution

of those benefits and the fact the matter is

That china benefited disproportionately far more than we did from the china trade over the last

Argument we’ve made on this podcast is I think freeberg made it is that we lifted 500 million people

I think I made it as well out of abject poverty in china, but as your point

What yeah, it’s it’s going to we have created we have created

We’ve created the return of great power rivalry. We have created a

competitor to the u.s

Who has roughly almost our same size economy?

And that is going to challenge us for privacy and we need diplomacy. We need very sophisticated diplomacy because this situation with china

It’s it’s not a clear path

Why why is it that you think that we need diplomacy with china when we didn’t need it with russia

No, I I do think we did. I fully conceded that we should have avoided

We should have taken note off the table. I said that from day one. Listen, it’s it’s really important to

Not just say that. Oh, we failed to play chess here that this policy isn’t working

Like let’s not forget how we got into this conflict. We got into this conflict because the administration

Said I think there were four main pillars to

Our current ukraine strategy number one

That ukraine could basically defeat russia if we basically just gave them weapons

That has not happened yet number two

The administration said that sanctions would weaken russia, maybe even destabilize its leadership

And collapse this economy that has not happened

The ruble is at an all-time high and because gas prices have gone up so much their economy has suffered

But on the whole it’s still doing pretty well

the third

Contention that was made by advocates of this proxy war is that the sanctions would hurt

Russia more than europe that has not happened. Europe is already hurting more than russia and it’s about with winter coming

It’s going to hurt even more and then the last thing

The last contention that was made our support for ukraine would rally

The world around us and would strengthen the western alliance. And I think what we’re starting to see

Is that the western alliance is fracturing and you see these gigantic protests in prague and these other countries

so listen, these were the pillars of our

Ukraine policy and they have all turned out to be flawed

And wrong and they’re becoming more wrong by the day and yet there is no reappraisal

Of our policy that’s coming out of washington or london or paris

None of these leaders are saying that there’s a problem

So I think we’re headed for not just an economic crisis, but a political crisis in europe because the fundamental tension

Between the needs of these people which is to basically preserve their economy and to stay warm in their homes

And the ideology of their leaders who are fanatically committed to waging a proxy war against russia instead of finding a diplomatic outcome

That was available last year. It was available in january. It was even available in march or april

That disconnect is the fundamental problem. All right, let’s go. Come on. Let’s talk about kim k. Come on

There is no word on how much money she’s raised for her private equity from from russian oligarchs

But kim will serve as co-founder and co-managing partner

Uh, the firm was co-founded with 16-year carlisle veteran jay

sammons, uh who run day-to-day ops

and uh

People may not know this but kim founded skims. That’s her undergarment company in 2019. It was last valued at 3.2 billion dollars

um

She is obviously got the largest following and is the biggest influencer in the world 329 million followers on instagram alone

Our friend gavin baker, uh responded. Mr. Beast actually. Mr. Beast actually just passed

Okay, so those are

Two examples of people who can put a consumer package good in the world and make it number one instantly gavin

Uh baker a friend of ours, uh tweeted, uh that she adds massive value in this exact regard

Uh, what do you think boys is she gonna have here’s why I think here’s why I think this is so important go

I I have a really strong belief that in the next 30 years or so

All traditional brands are gonna die

And I think that um what we’re seeing happening right now

with the with the power of um

democratized media like us creating a podcast

There are hundreds and now thousands of individuals

Who have stood up and created their own brand and their own presence?

Because of the content that they create on twitch on twitter on youtube, etc

On podcasting and as a result, they become the trusted sources of influence and it’s why they’re called influencers

And ultimately these influencers are becoming the brands they can like. Mr

Beast launched a chocolate bar became like the number one chocolate bar in the country

He just opened up a burger restaurant last week

10 000 people showed up number one. No more than that like a hundred thousand or something. It was insane

It was like the number one burger restaurant, uh opening or number one restaurant opening in history

Um, kylie jenner launches a makeup brand takes off becomes this billion dollar brand kim kardashian launches a clothing brand

Becomes a three billion dollar brand. These are not just brands

They’re businesses and here’s what I think is the most prescient m&a transaction of 2022 and you guys can tell me i’m crazy

I think the most important m&a deal of 2022

Was when pen gaming bought barstool sports because it shows that every consumer package good or every consumer services business

Ultimately needs to be a content business and if you don’t naturally have content creation in your blood

You have to go and buy a content business or you are going to die

And that’s why I think all traditional brands that aren’t oriented and built around content creation as their primary differentiating foundation

Will not survive and will not be able to compete effectively and instead what we’re going to see is influencers

and

individuals that create content build and

Distribute consumer goods and consumer services in a more efficient way because guess what?

They’ve got distribution built in distribution is the number one problem with all consumer services and all consumer goods

So I think in the future all advertising

Yeah, all advertising and marketing gets replaced by content creation and content creation direct to consumers through the

Social media platforms becomes the mechanism by which people are aware of and buy goods and services

So that’s why I think this deal is so important

And I think it’s a it’s a it’s another one of what we’re seeing in 2022

Which is the stacking away towards the end of nameless faceless brands and the evolution of the influencer. I think kim kardashian is incredible

She is an incredible

businesswoman

and

The fact that she can stand up what will probably be like a multi-billion dollar private equity fund

um, and frankly the companies that she invests in

has

um a really compelling chance of being successful because she can basically pour

So much visibility and notoriety and awareness of a brand

Into that company that that cap table if I was a director, I would say of course give her whatever she wants

So that’s the first thing

And the second thing I would say is that

I think what freeberg says is completely right. I think we’re at a point in time where

the biggest thing that if you want to build a consumer business my advice to you as an entrepreneur is

You need to build

direct distribution and scale

Because what that translates into what kim kardashian proves what mr. Beast is proving is it’s all about subsidized cac

Where you don’t customer cost of that customer acquisition where you are not paying dollars to facebook and google

But instead because you have direct distribution in a relationship with tens or hundreds of millions of users

You can pour them into different experiences

And when you can do that, it’s basically virtually zero cost

Your entire margin structure of how you build a consumer business has changed overnight. So that’s what they’ve proven

They’ve proven that you need to first build a brand

And then you can put you

Convert that brand into distribution funnel and then to basically pour all kinds of services into it

And one of the services as it turns out is now a private equity fund

So I think it’s incredible and I hope she’s super successful sax. Do you think this?

influencer, uh

Strategy is here for and going to have a major impact on the venture business. I think it’s pretty interesting

Looking at it

But I think it’s pretty interesting in the consumer space for the reason freeberg said which is distribution is so hard

So creating a great product is hard distribution is even harder. And this is a realization I had

You know many years ago and which is when I started doing yammer and then you know craft started focusing on sass

Which is at least when you do a b2b product, you know software as a service

You can charge enough money for it that you can get a sales team to pencil

so in other words

You charge an enterprise enough money for the software that you can then pay a salesperson to go out and sell it

So there was always a distribution model built in for b2b

And that’s why i’ve always liked that is there’s a playbook there where if you just build a good enough

Piece of enterprise software a good enough product. There’s always going to be distribution for it

However, that’s not true with consumer because consumer products are usually ad based

You can’t generally charge that much if you can charge at all they have high churn rates and so therefore

B to c only works if you can find a very low cost scalable distribution channel

And I think that’s what to freeberg’s point. I think that’s what the kardashians are offering. It’s clearly worked for their own products

I guess we’ll see how extensible it is

But this is really the key challenge with all consumer stuff is just how do you find a very cheap way of distributing it?

in the past the consumer products i’ve been involved in

Like paypal or investing in social networks like facebook. They were viral then they were exponentially viral

So they were able to basically grow virally for free

So you either have to have you know extraordinary virality to the product or some other distribution trick

That allows you to scale at low cost because you can’t afford a sales team

And what we’re seeing is the base of doing that is to create content. Mr

Beast created content for years before he built a big enough audience to do that

Kim kardashian did content for years before she had a distribution to do that dave portnoy and barstool sports. I mean the guy

dave portnoy

Jason calacanis. Yeah, seriously. I mean portnoy was out uh rating pizza and you know

Now he has all these other kind of you know media and content kind of

Um branches of his platform, but it’s all content creation and on top of that content

Not everybody’s good at it freeberg. That’s the other problem. I get it, but that’s not what i’m saying and that’s my point

So let’s say coca-cola tried to build a content business today. How good would they be? Not very good

That’s why they’re going to end up dying or they’re going to end up needing to buy some really interesting concept

I mean, do you think mr. Beast burger could beat?

McDonald’s yes, and that’s what i’m saying. That’s my point

That’s why I opened up kind of insane when you think about it if mr. Beast had five thousand franchisees

Yeah, but this is exactly my point that I said at the beginning every traditional brand will get destroyed in 30 years

And they will get destroyed by the influencers that have built an audience through content creation

And now creating businesses on top of that that compete with the traditional incumbents not technology advantaged businesses

I’m talking about core consumer goods and services. They also have to be good pen gaming pen gaming does betting

You know, there’s no real advantage in betting you build a sports book

That’s it

The reason pen gaming bought barstool is they now have an audience that they can drive to their sports books, right?

And so the same will happen with still have to make a great product though

I mean, that’s the other

Challenge here is can you also be a product savant?

Can you be a virtuoso in building a product in addition to being an influencer?

Yeah, I think that’s what kim gets right. She makes great product and mr

Beast his first burger was not good. But now this new burger from what I understand is awesome

So you have to have both things switched on I think about think about what’s easier and what’s harder what’s easier

Building an audience of two billion or a billion people that listen or watch you every week or building a great burger

It’s a lot harder to build the audience and so

You’ll bring in a chef if it’s a car. It’s really hard. Yeah, it’s not i’m not talking about complicated cars and stuff or electronics

I’m talking about basic consumer goods cereal beverages food. Why not?

Um commodity music audio like like all the stuff that’s commodity, uh, you know betting I mean this is not a bar

Betting is not a differentiated service offering to consumers. So ultimately, how do you differentiate it’s the it’s the audience

That you’ve now built the brand that you’ve built through the audience because of content creation

And so this is why I just want to point out distributed content creation

I think represents one of the most profound investing opportunities over the next decade

Because if you can give individuals the ability to make high quality content

They can scale an audience that that that now can be monetized in a thousand ways

Not just putting friggin ad spots on youtube

But there’s a thousand products you as an as an influencer can build on top of your audience or sell to your audience

Boom, it really changes the whole landscape for cpg and services. Um, and not to bring everything back to mr

beast, but

a large number of his videos he told us, um

He lost money on so the videos at some point started losing him money

And it was an investment in that brand and you know, it’s it’s clearly going to pay off now. I I saw alexis ohanian from

uh, you know reddit fame and

776 to do fun. He went to go see the burger place and he’s like

What like there were at that point in time 10 000 people online. Mr

Beast had to tell people please do not show up which of course

Then 20 000 people show up. Anybody have plugs or anything that they want to get off their chest sacks anything else?

Okay, we got a plug I do

there is a

An epidemic right now of the over prescription

Of amphetamines to children who are diagnosed with adhd

It is

an enormously important issue that

Doesn’t just touch kids anymore, but now also touches adults

you’ve seen

A lot of really kind of bad companies that are over prescribing this stuff get shut down and get sanctioned

Um, so I just wanted to let anybody who’s listening. No

And this is me talking my book so take this with a grain of salt but

There’s a company that i’m involved in that has a video game that has been approved by the fda

To be a useful treatment for kids who have been diagnosed with adhd

So if you have an 8 to 11 year old

You can go and talk to your pediatrician to find out about this solution. It’s called akili

It’s called akili

And it will allow you to prescribe to them a video game that they play 30 minutes a day

I just want to make sure people hear the name. It’s akili aka ili. So if you do a google search for akili aka

Ili interact go talk to your pediatrician if you are a good child that’s dealing with this

Go and read the label have the doctor decide. Okay, so i’m not telling you to go do this, but i’m asking you

Just look into it

but the idea is that

There are drugs that affect

Your brain and now we are increasingly able to design software

that

exquisitely targets

Certain aspects of your brain and are able to train them

And this is really the first example of such a thing that the fda

Who has reviewed all kinds of?

Clinical data has decided to approve and so it’s launching in

The next few weeks we’ve already written prescriptions to kids in every single state of the united states

And so to the extent that you’re deciding what to do

Or you have a child or you have somebody in your family that is of age 8 to 11 years old that’s dealing with this

I would just encourage you to learn about it. That is a plug and you know all the disclaimer

I know it’s a great plug

I think we should at the end just talk about some of these we’re working on and this is an incredible one

The number of kids

on these, you know

ADHD drugs attention drugs depression anxiety drugs millions. It is out of control

There is and listen, I don’t want to tell parents at a parent

But I will say this is becoming a dependency

And the number of drugs I don’t know if you saw that new york times story where they put this one girl on 10 drugs

They’re prescribing multiple drugs and we don’t know exactly what the long-term effects of children using these are and there are other solutions

I’m, not judging any parent

I’m, not judging any teachers who’s advising this but this country and a society needs to really look deeply at this issue and say

Should children because we didn’t go on these drugs when we were kids

They didn’t exist and they haven’t existed for all of humanity

And we need to think what kind of experiment are we running on 10 20 30 percent of kids in some schools

You’re you’re stating something so incredibly important, you know, when you have kids that are preteens and teenagers

Their physiology is changing dramatically and all of a sudden when you introduce a secondary chemical compound into all of that

You’re exactly right. We don’t really know what the outcomes are

And right now I think a lot of people are worried that the over prescription

Of drugs in this kind of condition is going to create a next version of an opioid pandemic

Or epidemic and I think like that’s the thing that’s exactly the analogy shemoth right now. This statistic is crazy

This is in the new york times express scripts a mail-order pharmacy recently reported that prescriptions of antidepressants for teenagers rose

38 percent from 2015 to 29. We are prescribing these at an alarming rate

I have many parents in my circle who have kids who had what I would consider

modest behavioral issues or modest attention issues and they talked to me about this and they

Felt in multiple cases like they were being bullied or pressured by teachers

to put their kids on behavioral drugs because

Their kids were behaving

10 as badly as I did in middle school or high school

This is being used

I believe this is my personal belief. I know there are some kids who need these drugs or I assume that there are

But I think this is being used to keep kids in their seats and to make it easier

For parents to have to deal with what are normally the hardships of teenager, you know

Teenagers and just be very careful parents

About the extent to which you you know, you might be being pressured perhaps parents have told me they felt bullied

Into giving their kids these drugs. It really is infuriating to me and I think it’s really great that you

People should look into it exercise talking to your kids. These things also work

We had a guidance counselor at

at our school

Tell me that they thought that one of my children should just get put on these drugs

and I was like

It was

The most random statement and all I could get from her

Was that she just didn’t want to deal with the fact that every now and then?

This kid would just you know be exuberant

Yeah to your point. I want to kill their spirit. I had the same conversation

I don’t want to get into it too much. But you know, I think that these teachers now and i’m not saying it’s all teachers

They are like it’s just easier to manage kids who are on focused energy drugs

And then there are some parents who want their kids to do really good on standardized testing

I would have done better on standardized testing if I was on

Adderall or whatever these attention drugs are we everybody would score 10 better

But what does it do to the quality of your life long term?

That’s the question we need to ask about this stuff and we don’t have answers for it

I don’t want to be tom cruise on this podcast

But there are other ways to keep

You know kids healthy and to deal with these issues and I think these things are to say they’re over prescribed

It’s going to be a huge understatement. We’re going to look at this like the opioid crisis. I guarantee it

I think that’s exactly if you you start dope sick, right and

People thought they were doing the right thing. Oh these people have pain this drug manages pain

And then they found out like oh, yeah, you know what this drug also makes you can make you an addict and could ruin your life

Uh great job on that investment. Um, and I and I hope it works

Yeah, thank you, uh sax anything else, uh any companies in your portfolio

You want to give a shout out to we might as well get something out of this fucking pod since we’re leaving

Seven and a half million dollars on the fucking table and you guys won’t even let me run all in summit too

So I can get a half milli

I don’t have anything to plug right now, but no company you invested in you need a plug for how about you super gut?

Can we get some supergut.com in here? These bars taste great. Friedberg. I love this. Thank you

Thank you. I literally just ordered another pack of them

I’m glad. Thank you. They’re delicious

Super gut do you have supergut.com? By the way, this is where i’m having

Yeah, supergut.com, but i’m this is actually one of my d2c companies

where i’m having a lot of these conversations about how do you actually

avoid just buying ads on facebook and

Uh google and how do you actually build an audience, right?

How do you ultimately convert your customers by creating content? And so this was originally unique, right? And then you changed it

Yeah based on the science around. Um

around resistant starch and how it changes the gut biome and so

Um, but this is general i’m on the board of a couple of d2c companies and it is universally the conversation right now

Because in the last year

the cost of d2c, uh direct to consumer marketing on facebook and google

It’s brutal double tripled and a lot of the unit economics are falling apart on d2c businesses because of it

You know costs a lot more to acquire the customer than you make from them

And so everyone’s scrambling to figure out okay

How do I acquire customers and that’s where this content creation strategy is becoming a critical linchpin for most consumer businesses now

It’s a really important part

I think a couple of us are investors in eight sleep and they were like, please let us advertise on all in

I was like, sorry, no ads, but i’ll shout you out here eight sleep. It’s great product

I have a plug but I want to save it. So

Like fucking drop a plug for one. No, no, the product hasn’t launched yet

Give me like a month

All right

And if anybody wants to be a venture investor

Jason at calacanis.com to come to one of my webinars and see my list fund since we

Started allowing all these plugs. I thought we

It was a setup. It was a setup

I just wanted to do a roundup of plugs so I could get mine in so i was being generous

Worked plan worked. I got you on the hook for yours. What was your what was your plug?

What were you doing your venture fund? I’m doing what’s fun for and well for plugging stuff

I’ll be over subscribe plug. I’ll plug the call

If you want to call it up, we’re all in everybody’s calling up. Let’s you know, we should do a call in

We should all do like an after hours where we take questions from the audience. That would be great

I would do that. Yeah, I would do that. Can I get a point? All right, let’s go everybody

This has been all in episode 95. Wait, wait, should we do that? Create more?

Jake out that wasn’t that that was another deal you turned down just like the ukraine deal

This is a theme here is that you turn down deals you later regret

Nine months later you admit I was right you should have taken the deal

I should take the quality. Look how hard chamath is crashing right now. Look at him. Look at it. What time is it there?

It’s like 11 30, right?

Midnight, it’s 11 30. It’s 11 30. That’s okay

I’m losing my life. I lost my voice. I lost my voice

Send us an invite for uh, ama for the four of us on calling calling. I’ll do that. Everybody down. Yeah, we should do that

Okay. Yeah, just remember

Maybe yeah live ama live ama with the best

I’ll show up. Maybe I’ll show up for snacks

Jake yeah, i’ll show up. I’d love i’d be happy to do it. I’m back in the united states tomorrow

All right. Well, i’m gonna play poker

in

14 hours in two hours if you get here you’re gonna ask everybody to come play

But we’ll meet you at the airport. We’ll pick you up from the airport. We’ll pick up the airport

We’ll play chinese poker in the back of the car. All right, everybody

We thought it would be suck a loss and chamath you need something a little honey tea

I I need a lozenge. I have some tea over there. Can I get a little?

I love you guys. Love you besties. See you soon

Let your winners ride

Rain man david sax

And it said we open sourced it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it i’m the queen of

Besties are gone

Oh

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just useless

It’s like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release somehow

We need to get

You