Bill Ackman
Founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management. On 3 shows, 3 appearances, plus 2 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutive@BillAckman ↗pershingsquareholdings.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Bill Ackman is an activist hedge fund manager who oversees concentrated public equity investments through Pershing Square Capital Management, which he founded in 2004 after co-founding Gotham Partners. He is widely recognized for high-stakes corporate campaigns and macro hedges.
3shows
3appearances
79statements
8resolved
7supported
0contradicted
88%fully supported
143said about them ↓ Everything Bill Ackman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ackman: Biden wealth tax will bankrupt every startup in America
“You know, the Biden wealth tax, which is like, 25% of the appreciation of things that you own privately, it's going to bankrupt every startup. No one will ever start a business in America anymore, right?”
Ackman: Sarah Friar should be OpenAI CEO and Sam Altman chair
“I thought she should be CEO of OpenAI. I think Sam should be chair.”
Ackman: Lack of SVB Guarantee Would Have Caused Regional Bank Runs
“Woke up Saturday morning after the events of the week, pretty convinced that if the government didn't, at a minimum, guarantee deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, we'd have a massive run at pretty much every regional bank on Monday.”
Ackman: Expanding immigration is the best way to curb inflation
“The best way to solve that problem is to open up immigration, right? Why, why force people out of work to slow the economy to get rid of inflation? Why not increase the supply of workers so that you know, we temper the increases in wages? I just think it's a b…”
Ackman: Donald Trump would defeat Joe Biden in a presidential matchup
“If it's Biden, Trump, I think Trump wins.”
Ackman: Asset managers do not need carried interest tax advantages
“I don't think we need that extra tax advantage. I carried interest when you're managing assets to motivate our economic behavior.”
Ackman: SoftBank's Mega-Funds Did a Massive Disservice to Startups and Markets
“And so with SoftBank injecting, you know, a hundred billion dollars in marking up the value of companies and giving them capital that they could use to postpone going public, I think it's fundamentally been a disservice to the capital markets and probably to t…”
Pershing Square Bought $2.05 Billion in Equities While Unwinding COVID Hedge
“We'd invested two billion fifty million between March 12th and March 18th at 1230 in the stock market buying, you know, additions, adding to our portfolio, buying, repurchasing Starbucks. We had sold half the hedge for a 1,000,000,300, a little more than half …”
Ackman: Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are undervalued amid AI hype
“I think a similar thing is happening today, in a sense, to Amazon and Meta, Microsoft.”
Ackman: Howard Hughes will reinvest all cash flow into insurance
“What we're doing is instead of reinvesting all the cash the business generates into real estate, we're going to reinvest all the cash into insurance.”
Ackman aims to build Howard Hughes from $4B to $1T market cap
“The company's got like a four billion dollar market cap, and the goal is to build it into a trillion dollar thing over time.”
Ackman: A higher stock price increases a company's underlying value
“The fascinating thing about liquidity and valuation is The higher a stock price goes, and it's gonna sound sort of intuitive, but it's not, the more valuable the company becomes. You know, there's actually the increase in value of the company increases the val…”
Ackman: Elon Musk's army of online followers enabled Tesla to be built
“He builds an army of believers and followers that enabled Tesla to be built,”
Ackman: Missing Out on Big Winners Can Be Worse Than Losing Capital
“Missing Google can be a, you know, as important a mistake, or maybe even a bigger mistake, if you will, than missing You know, the next, like some other making a bad investment that doesn't work, I guess is my fault.”
Ackman: Pershing Square Lost $400 Million Exiting Netflix Position
“So we took about a billion dollar position in Netflix after the stock fell about 50%. And then, you know, we're a long term investor, but we learned information within a few months of the initial investment, i.e. The next quarter's results at Colt, caused us t…”
Ackman: 90% of Pershing Square Investments Over 20 Years Were Profitable
“The reality is, 90% of the investments we've made in the last 20 years have been profitable. In fact, meaningfully profitable.”
Ackman: Pershing Square has never gone long or short regional banks
“We have never been short regional banks. We've never been long regional banks.”
Ackman: Decent chance Fed Chair Powell pauses interest rate hikes
“And so I think there's a decent chance Powell says, you know, we've, we're not raising rates.”
Ackman: A business leader running as a Democrat could defeat Trump
“And I think they can absolutely get the Democratic nominee And against Trump, they'll get the you know, the center and center right part of the Republican Party and can win.”
Ackman: For-Profit Models Solve Most Problems Better Than Philanthropy
“And what I've learned from that is that philanthropy is, is often not the solution to many problems and that you know, business and for-profit business models are much more effective solutions to problems, most problems.”
Ackman predicts persistent 3% to 4% inflation for foreseeable future
“The world is a structurally different place than it was for the last 20 odd years, and you're going to see persistent levels of inflation, you know, three to four percent inflation for the foreseeable future. I think that, that's certainly being missed based o…”
Ackman: Heavy Index Fund Ownership Reduces Market Liquidity and Amplifies Volatility
“Having index funds as major holders of securities in stable market conditions actually reduces the liquidity of companies, and it means that sort of hedge funds and more active investors who are making day-to-day buy and sell decisions actually push securities…”
Ackman: Short Sellers Uncover Corporate Fraud Much More Often Than Regulators
“I give a lot of credit to the folks at Muddy Waters who have unearthed a meaningful number of fraudulent companies, and I've yet to find an example of a regulator finding a fraudulent company. It's either a journalist often being fed by a short seller or a sho…”
Ackman: Some Tesla short sellers crossed the line trying to harm company
“In the case of Tesla, you know, I do think, you know, some of the short sellers went beyond the role of identifying overvaluation and their attempts to actually harm a company, and that's where I think it goes beyond the pale.”
The other half of the tape: Bill Ackman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 132 times in 49 episodes across the shows. 11 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most David Sacks 33David Friedberg 27Chamath Palihapitiya 19Jason Calacanis 18Harry Stebbings 13Shane Parrish 9Andrew Wilkinson 8Mario Schlosser 1
Statements about Bill Ackman, by other people (11)
Gerstner: Bill Ackman's call for 6-8% Fed rate hikes is misdirected
“However, the hyperventilation this week by Bill Ackman on Twitter, that the Fed needs to be doing radically more, that somehow we need to be raising rates to six, seven, eight percent in order to squash inflation, to me seems highly misdirected and totally out…”
Calacanis defends Bill Ackman boycotting Harvard students who signed anti-Israel letter
“So, no, I don't think he's out of line. I think it's an important lesson for people. This is not freedom of speech. This is owning your words. You must own your words and position, and it's important that young people learn this now.”
Sacks: Bill Ackman's presence on X is a huge positive asset
“And I actually think that Ackman's presence on Twitter X is a huge positive for him. It's an asset because he has a gigantic followership and he's able to speak directly to his audience in the way that we do.”
Creel: Bill Ackman offered $200M when asked for $100M in unplanned capex
“I went into the board meeting, and I said, we have an issue. For me to optimize my service, I've got to run west out of Saskatoon, not east, but I need a hundred million dollars to spend on rail and ties and ballasts, and that was not planned for at all, and B…”
Friedberg: Bill Ackman turned $27M hedge into $2.6B return
“He turned a twenty seven million dollar insurance instrument into 2.6 billion of returns for his fund, and he still didn't sell his portfolio.”
Chamath: Bill Ackman and Ken Griffin recently turned negative on markets
“Ackman's been negative. Ken Griffin recently turned negative.”
Chamath: Bill Ackman's bond call was right with 10-year yield below 4%
“That bond call was totally right. You know, the 10 years now sub four percent.”
Wilkinson spent $60,000 on a charity lunch to diligence Bill Ackman
“What I ended up doing is I spent 60,000 dollars bidding on a charity lunch where I'm like, okay, I get to donate charity. I get to meet this interesting guy. And my plan was that if he was an asshole, I would sell all of it as soon as we got out. And if I like…”
McLean: Unlike Enron, Valeant attracted smart money like Sequoia and Bill Ackman
“With Enron, when you got to what was commonly considered the smart money, people either weren't invested in Enron, or they were short. And it was largely long-only funds and index funds, and what we think of in terrible terms, but the dumb money that was inves…”
Sacks: Bill Ackman covered bond short at peak 10-year yield
“He shorted bonds for most of the year, making hundreds of millions of dollars, and then on October 23rd, he announced that he was covering his positions, and that it was too risky to stay short in bonds, and he was going long. And that very day was the high po…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
All-In 98
the Knowledge Project 19
20VC 15
2026 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- 20Growth: The $6.6B Growth Engine Behind ElevenLabs | Why ElevenLabs Do Not Have PMs | The 7 Part Launch Playbook to Crush All Launches with Luke Harries, Head of Growth @ ElevenLabs
- Palo Alto Networks CEO: "AI Found 5 Years of Bugs in 6 Weeks"
- Thomas Laffont: The $4T AI IPO Wave Is Coming… and We’ve Never Seen Anything Like It
- Debt Spiral or NEW Golden Age? Super Bowl Insider Trading, Booming Token Budgets, Ferrari's New EV
- All-In's 2026 Predictions
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- Home Affordability Crisis, Palantir's Advantage, Big Short on AI, H-1B Abuse, Solar Storm Hits Earth
- 20VC: ElevenLabs Head of Growth on Why You Do Not Need PMs | The 7-Part Launch Playbook That Gets 700K+ Views Per Product | The Truth About CAC, Payback & Performance Marketing in AI with Luke Harries
- Trump Brokers Gaza Peace Deal, National Guard in Chicago, OpenAI/AMD, AI Roundtripping, Gold Rally
- Trump Rally or Bessent Put? Elon Back at Tesla, Google's Gemini Problem, China's Thorium Discovery
- 2025 Predictions: Tech, Business, Media, Politics!
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 31 mentions in 12 episodes 3 per episode
- Kamala surges, Trump at NABJ, recession fears, Middle East escalation, Ackman postpones IPO
- E163: Market rips, Media RIFs, Texas defies Biden, Fintech reckoning, ARkStorm 2.0 & more
- E168: Can Google save itself? Abolish HR, AI takes over Customer Support, Reddit IPO teardown
- Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig: Vinted CEO's Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces | E1114 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Klaus Hommels: Why "Portfolios are Merely a Construct to Make LPs Happy"? | E1231 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Vlad Tenev, Co-Founder & CEO @Robinhood: The GameStop Saga & The Future of AI | E1222 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Alex Wang: Why Data Not Compute is the Bottleneck to Foundation Model Performance | E1164 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Trump verdict, COVID Cover-up, Crypto Corner, Salesforce drops 20%, AI correction?
- 4 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 41 mentions in 11 episodes 4 per episode
- E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI's news deal, FCC targets Elon, the limits of free speech & more
- E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023
- E130: DeSantis's Twitter Spaces, debt ceiling, Nvidia rips, state of VC, startup failure & more
- E131: 2024 Fantasy President picks, debt ceiling agreement, Dollar dominance & more
- E156: Ivy League antisemitism, macro, SaaS recovery, Gemini, Figma deal delay + big Friedberg update
- E149: Hamas terror attacks in Israel: fallout, reaction, next steps
- E140: LK-99, Sclerotic establishments, Fitch downgrades US debt, Trump indicted... again
- E120: Banking crisis and the great VC reset
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 33 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
- Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad
- Andrew Wilkinson: Tiny Holdings
- E86: Macro outlook: jobs, housing, inflation + Dutch farmers protests & EU climate missteps
- E65: VC markup dynamics, Russia/US tensions over Ukraine, Altos Labs raises $3B, Stripe mafia & more
- E64: Antitrust standards & enforcement, tech repricing, lab leak obfuscation, E63 reactions & more
- E102: Elon closes Twitter deal, $META uncertainty, Zuck's historic bet, big tech decline & more
- E97: SPAC updates, public/private market overview, Putin's end game & more
- E83: Market slide continues, and how to address Uvalde
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- E15: “The Besties” All-In’s inaugural award show covering the best, worst & most memorable of 2020
- SPAC talk with Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, David Sacks & Jason Calacanis | from Episode 7
- E7: California's collapse, how SPACs are opening the markets for growth stocks & more
- #85 Bethany McLean: Crafting a Narrative
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Bill's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management | 1 | 33 | 100% 4/4 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management | 1 +2 | 33 | 67% 2/3 | full record on 20VC → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Founder and CEO, Pershing Square Capital Management | 1 | 13 | 100% 1/1 | full record on All-In → |