E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

There's a lot more protest votes today. There's just a lot of reasons where RFK can garner a lot of support and build a plurality among centrists.

Third party candidates for me is the biggest surprise. And I do think it could have a meaningful impact.

soft landings are like second marriages. It's the triumph of hope over experience, meaning they almost never happened. ... the fact that we didn't get that, I think that was basically a pretty important bullet dodge.

let's just say that those of us who are still holding bags of Solana are very happy campers right now.

Second was, I think SpaceX has really turned a corner. Starlink is really at scale. Starship looks like it's viable.

I'm looking forward to Starlink for private aviation as well, but I've heard it's a real game changer on commercial flights and every kind of flight.

My biggest political loser is the DEI movement... I think that that movement is going to take a big hit and took a big hit the end of this year and will continue to, I think, be questioned by donors and supporters of the ideologies of that movement.

sustainable asset ownership and ESG ownership across the world shrank by 15%, which you may say is that a big number or not, that's $5 trillion. ... So when the money starts to scurry, I think that you can pretty much expect that people's patience and support of these kinds of movements are waning.

My best trend is the return of colorblindness as the standard and the pushback on DEI. ... I think that this is a good trend and hopefully it continues next year because America should be a colorblind meritocracy.

I too, Sacks, was looking at the issue of DEI and I framed mine as DEI dying and meritocracy thriving.

one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we didn't have a recession. I mean, I think most people were betting on a recession in 23 They thought that a soft landing would be almost impossible.

Single person efforts can yield what historically has required 6, 12 or more people to do using co-pilot tools in AI. ... just imagine once the majority of people are using these co-piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools, it's really gonna increase productivity globally as it finds its way into every business

they doubled down on their existing businesses and they've made some great progress on AI. So my biggest business surprise was the resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook.

I am astounded by the growth of TikTok. ... despite all the saber rattling, the CCP has not divested from it, even though Trump and Biden both said they were going to try to do that.

I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for longer for quite a while now. And I was really surprised when Jay Powell had this press conference in December, in early December, and just basically capitulated and just said, you know what, guys, we're going to be cutting probably three times next year.

The reason why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for PaxLavit and for COVID boosters. Apparently, people do not see the value in those products. ... I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines.

And they're facing an even bigger lawsuit, a $2.7 billion lawsuit with another election technology company that will happen in 2025 Pension funds are now suing this loathsome company because they lost so much money for them.

I do think the judgments or the magnitude of the judgments are ridiculous

I think now what the setup is for 2024 is basically we will melt up up until the first cut and then there'll probably be some real selling.

We could be pulled into a war in the Middle East at any time. We still have a proxy war going in Ukraine. ... So there are a lot of risks still on the horizon.

I think you guys will like my worst trend. It is the metastasizing national debt. ... And it is a bipartisan problem. It's been going on for really 20-plus years. ... But it is getting worse and worse under Biden.

I'm going to go with the normalization of spending. I think it's probably the worst trend. ... It's like we've normalized spending and COVID just made it worse. ... And suddenly it becomes normal. And this normalization catches up to us.

I think these semi-glutide GLP1s are here to stay. They're transformational on society.

I do think that the whole B2B software industry definitely went through a recession. But fortunately, I think we bottomed out and are starting to see green shoots now. So things are returning to normal.

My best new tech of this year, I think, is really important as we race to keep the promise of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation, which is open source, locally run LLMs.

I think that the documents case galvanized his leadership in the Republican nomination... I think he is going to run away with the Republican nomination and, barring some catastrophic meltdown, has a better chance to get into the White House than before this Colorado case.

not only will that vintage underperform, but it could torpedo as many as 50% of firms that are managing capital today in Silicon Valley. And it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to venture as an asset class significantly