E75 · All-In Alpha

conviction thresholds crossed by this episode — 65 / 45 / 15 · ideas born here show where they landed. why 65 isn't always green

▲ +17.2 📈 Low-diligence capital breeds a fraud wave in the venture-backed cohort watch → green threshold 52.0 → 69.2 still watch — green gate not met

▲ +33.1 📈 Internal political activism degrades big-tech operating results (Apple) ember → watch 29.2 → 62.3

▲ +16.9 📈 Private capital concentrates in a few mega-GPs that take themselves public ember → watch 35.6 → 52.5

▼ -40.5 📈 Tech drawdown is in the eighth inning - the bottom is close green threshold → ember 67.6 → 27.0

▲ +10.7 📈 Buy-now-pay-later is a feature, not a company dormant → ember 14.6 → 25.4

▼ -13.9 🏛️ Ukraine ceasefire is weeks away — markets rally on the deal ember → dormant 28.8 → 14.9

▼ -8.3 📈 Trump's SPAC is a grift that does not hold its valuation ember → dormant 17.0 → 8.7

each voice's force on conviction this episode — supports and opposes, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of this episode's movement

Chamath

9 captures · 40% of movement

+58.8 / -40.5 → net +18.2

Sacks

8 captures · 28% of movement

+54.5 / -13.9 → net +40.6

Friedberg

6 captures · 22% of movement

+34.3 / -20.4 → net +13.9

Jason

4 captures · 10% of movement

+25.9 → net +25.9

▲ QQQ 📈 Tech drawdown is in the eighth inning - the bottom is close closed 13 CONTESTED ▼ -40.5 67.6 → 27.0

Chamath reversal ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 13:14

until the Fed see that there's a massive trading of liquidity, which means like you see these indices crack big time, 35, 3600 in the S&P, they're just going to keep ratcheting things up. As it comes all the way down to our companies in Silicon Valley and tech, what that means is like you have to start planning for the worst.

▼ AAPL 📈 Internal political activism degrades big-tech operating results (Apple) closed 36 ▲ +33.1 29.2 → 62.3

Jason support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 49:12

at some point, Netflix was like, listen, you don't have to agree with every comedian on our platform. ... And then, of course, we know Coinbase did it. ... And Toby from Shopify did it. And now you have Twitter doing it. ... I think at some point Apple is going to have to say, you know what?

Sacks support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 50:31

The fact of the matter is that this whole woke mob thing, it's a paper tiger. They don't have the support of most of the population. ... And all it takes is one strong person to stand up to the mob, as we saw Brian Armstrong do at Coinbase. And the mob dissipated.

Friedberg support ×2 sentiment ▶ 51:37

I don't think he'll care what employees kind of gripe about. I don't think he'll care what regulators gripe about. ... He'll talk about the long-term opportunity, the philosophical alignment with mission and plow forward. And I think that that level of leadership is what separates some, you know, great businesses from others.

▼ META 🏛️ Big tech gets regulated as common carriers via a left-right deal closed 30 CONTESTED ▲ +22.0 18.4 → 40.4

Friedberg oppose ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 53:32

If they choose, like Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and Google, to change how their platform operates, Sacks, I actually think that's a commercial decision made by a private company. They should have the right to do that, but they're going to lose users over time.

Sacks support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 55:50

if they take away your right to free speech on these platforms, if they censor you, if they de-platform you, you do not have a right to free speech in this country. That right needs to be protected.

Chamath support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 59:45

My thoughts have evolved before when he first got banned. I was really supportive of it. ... in general now, a much more free speech because I think it's much more fragile than I thought it was before. ... two years later, a much more on David's original camp now, which is we just need to establish this as a pillar of society and not deviate and find credible voices on both sides. ... But the minute you start cancelling stuff today, as I sit in 2022, what I would tell you is I think it's very, very bad because it's going in a really bad place.

▼ IPO 📈 Low-diligence capital breeds a fraud wave in the venture-backed cohort closed 49 ▲ +17.2 52.0 → 69.2

Friedberg support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 25:46

In a world where everyone was raising a billion dollar second fund or a three billion dollar fourth fund, and you suddenly had an influx of a hundred billion dollars of venture money in a year, it's a lot like what we saw in crypto markets, which is an extraordinary explosion in highly speculative bubble assets. And a lot of these businesses maybe shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Sacks support ×1 sentiment ▶ 27:41

He's got a very interesting history, actually, as well. I think if they had done any diligence.

Jason support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 27:44

They didn't do any diligence on him. Apparently, he had two companies that were kind of major red flags. ... We were seeing deals last year close in a week. ... it's what was it, you know, historically, a four to six week process. And then it went down to a four to six day process. And then people were meeting with you one day and saying they're closed the next.

▲ BX 📈 Private capital concentrates in a few mega-GPs that take themselves public closed 41 CONTESTED ▲ +16.9 35.6 → 52.5

Friedberg support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 20:56

the incentive for a traditional venture capitalist that maybe isn't motivated by improving their craft, but they're motivated and incentivized primarily by making money is to raise more capital and get more deals. ... It used to be maybe a VC would sit on a handful of boards, and now it's like you're the board representative for 12 companies. ... the VCs are more incentivized to raise more money, to make more investments and then pay less attention and just go raise the next fund.

Chamath support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 23:35

if you're seeking out AUM, you're going to hire a very different kind of person than if you're helping trying to help build companies. And the difference is that when you're trying to raise AUM, your customer is not the company, the customer is the LP.

▲ SPY 🏛️ Ukraine ceasefire is weeks away — markets rally on the deal closed 11 CONTESTED ▼ -13.9 28.8 → 14.9

Sacks oppose ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 1:08:20

I think it's going to go on for a long time. That's what General Milley testified. It could go on for years. I think it's going to become a permanent feature in the background of Biden's presidency.

▼ PYPL 🏛️ Financial deplatforming becomes the next big political fight closed 35 ▲ +12.7 49.3 → 61.9

Chamath support ×1 sentiment ▶ 45:12

we've seen sort of random decision making that seems arbitrary by a lot of these technology companies, and the payments companies. Friedberg was mentioning Visa and MasterCard earlier in the group chat.

Sacks support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 57:29

And they're not just doing it on speech. They're also taking away your right to engage in payments, in transactions, to earn a living. And unless we stop this now, it'll keep going.

▼ GOOGL 🏛️ The four big-tech monopolies get broken up by the end of the decade closed 37 CONTESTED ▲ +10.9 24.6 → 35.5

Sacks support ×2 sentiment ▶ 55:50

in Congress, they're pushing six bills forward to regulate these companies as monopolies. So they don't believe that they should be free to do whatever they want. They believe that they're monopolies. And indeed, many of them are monopolies.

▼ AFRM 📈 Buy-now-pay-later is a feature, not a company closed 14 ▲ +10.7 14.6 → 25.4

Chamath support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 17:52

I think it would have been much more credible for Stripe to say this is a critical piece of the infrastructure and value chain and payments that we want to own. So we're just going to go and put some of our better engineers as a side project and see if we can tack away at something that works.

▼ TLT 🏦 Fed and ECB are in a much tighter posture a year from now closed 45 CONTESTED ▲ +9.5 27.8 → 37.3

Chamath support ×2 explicit_prediction ▶ 10:26

So I think what the Fed's going to do is get even more aggressive. You're going to probably see, you know, a lot of 50s, maybe even a 75 point hike

▲ DBA 🛢️ Global drought turns self-sufficient countries into food importers closed 29 ▲ +8.9 34.0 → 42.9

Friedberg support ×3 explicit_prediction 9mo horizon ▶ 1:04:15

countries like China and others started to stockpile. They started to buy lots and lots of supply, drive up their stocks and their reserves, you know, for fear of the famine that's about to hit us in about nine months. ... they just downgraded the number of corn acres that are going to get planted this year, which is happening starting this month, from 93 million acres to 89 million.

▼ DJT 📈 Trump's SPAC is a grift that does not hold its valuation closed 3 CONTESTED ▼ -8.3 17.0 → 8.7

Friedberg oppose ×1 sentiment ▶ 1:01:40

Still doing well. But look, they had, you know, obviously a reaction, a market driven reaction to the fact that he was taken off Twitter. ... certainly proving to be technically difficult. But as we all know, it's not technically impossible. He just got probably the wrong people working on it.

▲ cg:ethereum 🪙 DAOs become a real capital-formation primitive closed 8 CONTESTED ▲ +5.9 29.0 → 34.9

Jason support ×1 sentiment ▶ 1:02:29

you could buy shares, you could lead a group, start a DAO, start a hedge fund, whatever, build a block to buy a bunch of shares. And then you could get a board seat on Twitter

▼ ARKK 🌍 Fed ending QE drains liquidity-dependent assets in 2022 closed 76 ▲ +4.9 74.6 → 79.5

Chamath support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 10:26

we're going to move by 50 basis point increments for the foreseeable two or three rate hikes, and we're going to start quantitative tightening ... what they're going to do is about $95 billion a month of the opposite action, which means they're taking money out of the system ... you probably are going to see them, you know, even ratchet up quantitative tightening until there is a bit of a bloodletting in the equity market. They need to see that the markets crack.

▼ SPY 🌍 Supply-chain crunch tips the US into 1970s-style stagflation next year closed 73 CONTESTED ▲ +3.8 77.2 → 81.1

Sacks support ×2 sentiment ▶ 1:10:27

And there's still risks of inflation and recession in the US. And I think if we are in a recession later this year, I think a lot of people in the US will be asking what was this all for?

▼ IPO 📈 2021 is the peak of the risk-capital golden era closed 80 CONTESTED ▲ +3.0 92.3 → 95.3

Jason support ×2 sentiment ▶ 7:56

we've been talking a little bit about the contraction in tech, the growth stocks having their multiples lowered, and we knew this was coming, but it's been a horrible week for large companies starting the layoffs

Chamath support ×3 explicit_prediction 18mo horizon ▶ 13:14

I think the worst means that there's an 18 month period where you cannot raise money on your terms, you have to raise money on the market terms. ... if you're not in a position to show good growth over these next two years, I would encourage you to just get your balance sheet in order to wait it out.

Sacks support ×3 explicit_prediction ▶ 14:14

If they just slammed on the brakes three or four months ago, when we were talking on the spot about the coming downturn, they could still have $30 million in the bank. ... if you're a high-burn company right now, that's not generating a lot of revenue to go along with it. You better slam on the brakes and rationalize your cost structure before it's too late.

▲ XLE ⚡ Global conflict era begins — energy and defense outperform closed 73 ▲ +1.9 76.7 → 78.6

Chamath support ×2 sentiment ▶ 1:13:29

So energy independence, I think beyond anything else, strategic, probably an order of magnitude, it is the most important thing.

written during extraction and stored in data/extractions/ep075.json — the auditable source of truth, including everything market-adjacent that did not earn a capture

Air date 2022-04-09, and the venture reckoning finally has a corpse: Fast, the one-click-checkout startup, wound down on 2022-04-05 after burning $10M/month on ~$50K/month of revenue, and the besties spend the first 40 minutes autopsying it. Chamath opens with the macro and delivers the single most important capture of the episode: the Fed has crescendoed to 50bp increments plus ~$95B/month of quantitative tightening, and he says they will keep ratcheting 'until there is a bit of a bloodletting in the equity market — they need to see that the markets crack,' naming 3500-3600 on the S&P as the level, plus 'an 18 month period where you cannot raise money on your terms.' That is a REVERSAL on his own tech-drawdown-eighth-inning-2022 call: at E064 he said big tech had 10-15% left and 'then we're kind of through most of the pain,' at E070 he put the bottom at 3800, and at E072 (three weeks before this) he called a 'meltup' with 'probably up' from here. Here he tells founders to plan for the worst. Coded as reversal, strength 3 — the highest-value single data point in the file. Sacks turns Fast into the receipt for his own risk-capital-golden-era-peaks call ('if they just slammed on the brakes three or four months ago... they could still have $30 million in the bank'), and the diligence-collapse thread lands squarely on low-diligence-capital-breeds-fraud-2021: Jason times the market top by process length — 'historically a four to six week process, and then it went down to a four to six day process' — while Sacks notes Fast's founder had a history and 'if they had done any diligence,' and Friedberg blames the $100B/yr venture inflow for 'an extraordinary explosion in highly speculative bubble assets' where 'a lot of these businesses maybe shouldn't have existed.' Chamath's sharpest structural point is that one-click checkout was never a company — Stripe should have built it in-house 'as a side project' rather than write a $120M check into a standalone — which is a clean reinforcement of bnpl-is-a-feature-not-a-company-2021 (only its third mention). The board-culpability fight splits: Sacks argues VCs structurally can't govern ('we just don't call the shots'), Chamath disagrees hard ('if Mike Moritz actually said it, he would have had to consider it'), and both he and Friedberg trace the rot to AUM-maximizing GPs where 'your customer is not the company, the customer is the LP' and one partner covers 12 boards — attached to venture-mega-gp-consolidation-2022. NOTE: payment-fee-pools-to-zero-2021, moderation-mandates-entrench-platforms-2021 and supply-chain-resilience-reshoring-2021 all closed before this air date, so nothing attached to them. Centrepiece two is Elon's 9% Twitter stake, disclosed five days earlier, with a board seat and the stock +30%. THE PLAY PROBLEM: the only instrument for a Twitter-specific thesis is TWTR, which the pipeline maps to None (taken private Oct 2022, no continuing listing), so NO new idea was coined for it and no proxy was invented — no TSLA substitution, since nobody made a Tesla capital-allocation claim (Chamath's SpaceX/Tesla line is about societal impact, not capital). The directional content instead went to three live priceable homes. Sacks table-pounds the constrain-moderation-discretion thesis (big-tech-common-carrier-regulation-2021): free speech now happens on privately-owned networks, 'if they de-platform you, you do not have a right to free speech in this country — that right needs to be protected,' and he adds the antitrust receipt that Congress has six bills live and 'indeed, many of them are monopolies.' Friedberg takes the other side for the second time in this wave (he opposed the same idea at E066): platform moderation is 'a commercial decision made by a private company... they should have the right to do that, but they're going to lose users over time.' Chamath does an explicit on-air self-reversal on deplatforming — he was 'really supportive' of the Trump ban, now 'much more free speech because I think it's much more fragile than I thought it was before' and 'much more on David's original camp' — recorded as support (not stance=reversal) because he has no prior mention on that idea to reverse. The debanking leg is live too: Sacks' 'they're also taking away your right to engage in payments, in transactions, to earn a living — and unless we stop this now, it'll keep going,' plus Chamath flagging arbitrary Visa/MasterCard decisions, both on financial-deplatforming-political-fight-2021. Jason's Netflix/Chappelle → Spotify/Rogan → Coinbase → Shopify roll call and 'at some point Apple is going to have to say leave your feelings at home' is the strongest employee-activism-degrades-big-tech-results-2021 mention since E049, with Sacks ('the woke mob is a paper tiger') and Friedberg backing him. Friedberg's science corner is the food crisis, and it is a continuation of his E072 famine call with a hard new receipt: the USDA just cut planted corn acreage from 93M to 89M, China and others are stockpiling 'for fear of the famine that's about to hit us in about nine months,' calories aren't practically fungible because you can't run corn through a wheat mill, and Sri Lanka / North and East Africa break — attached to global-drought-food-import-2021, same home E072 used. Sacks kills his own ukraine-ceasefire-weeks-away-2022 counter-position harder ('it could go on for years... a permanent feature in the background of Biden's presidency'), keeps a recession-later-this-year flag on supply-chain-stagflation-recession-2021, and closes with the pivot-to-Asia grand-strategy case for us-china-clash-narrative-decade-2022. Chamath's wrap ranks energy independence as the #1 US strategic priority (global-conflict-energy-defense) and wants specialty chemicals and semiconductors 'completely under US control' — that second half was deliberately NOT attached to china-taiwan-silicon-chokepoint-2021, because he reversed on a Taiwan invasion only three weeks earlier at E072 ('completely off the table') and this is an industrial-resilience argument, not the invasion tail risk; supply-chain-resilience-reshoring-2021, its natural home, is closed. No disclosed positioning this week — nobody named a trade they had put on, so zero positioning-tier mentions. LABELS: clean. Turn counts Jason 89 / Chamath 68 / Sacks 57 / Friedberg 47, all four present and in normal proportion, and content confirms every label — Jason does the third-person bestie intro and the 'Love you besties' sign-off, Sacks brings PayPal 2000 ('we were burning $10 million a month like fast'), the Craft SaaS board deck and Blitz Fail, his American Conservative piece and the Ukraine-realist read; Chamath brings 'when I was a principal at Mayfield,' the Sequoia/Kleiner apprenticeship, the group chat and the carnivore-vs-tempeh bit; Friedberg brings the vegan teasing, Founders Fund proximity, and the milling/USDA agriculture masterclass. Eight addressed-by-name → next-turn checks all resolved correctly. One isolated single-line misattribution: at 7:22 Jason asks Sacks 'what was the origin of your brie obsession' and the answer 'Stanford. I've been to Stanford.' is labelled Chamath — that is Sacks (Stanford), pure banter, no capture touches it. Not a swap, merge or rotation.

E75: Fast shuts down, board culpability, Elon buys 9% of Twitter, deplatforming's slippery slope

Tier crossings

Who moved the board

What got argued (17 ideas)

Episode digest