The Ledger, every show

“And I've been in the room with Zuckerberg. I've watched him fucking lie to the president of the United States about what they know internally versus, like, the claims he spouts out loud.”

“I've been in the room with Zuckerberg. I've watched him fucking lie to the President of the United States about what they know internally versus, like, the claims he spouts out loud.”

“Yeah, I think Facebook is a cancer, and they know it.”

“Yeah, I think Facebook is a cancer”

“And so the one thing we absolutely have to do is research sunlight reflection. And so we have no way out of this without reflecting sunlight back into the solar system to buy us some time.”

“I don't know why I'd hire a financial analyst again. It's a job I value, but at the same time, this thing in moments spit back compound annual growth rate analysis.”

“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter and said, dude, you gotta stay out of the company. You know, that's really the only force that Silicon Valley leader…”

“You know, I deeply respect all the work you've done in the space, but you sound like someone who hasn't visited the lab in a while, because that's not where it is, and I can't preempt any announcements coming from any of our companies, but I can assure you it'…”

“But I think SoftBank is just value destructive, and it drives me fucking crazy.”

“The multiples are already there. I think IRR is 95% right now, and so so we're already getting fucking rich doing it”

“And if we don't do it, You know, North Korea is going to do it on their own. Like, some rogue state is going to launch a projectile that explodes a bunch of dust in the atmosphere, and we won't know which dust, which altitude, and the best ways to do it, and w…”

“Absolutely. I'll get way richer from this. I have multiple companies in the portfolio right now that have, like, they have a trajectory to being multi-trillion dollar market cap”

“I can assure you it is much, much more near term than 30 years imminent, maybe now, who knows, but it's been fucking fascinating to see these accelerating curves”

“I think SoftBank is just value destructive, and it drives me fucking crazy.”

“Their primary competitor, Akamai, had accused them of all kinds of computer fraud and abuse stuff that was just Totally trumped up garbage.”

“We went from zero to within a year bidding six billion dollars on spectrum and attaching openness rules to wireless spectrum. That's why the wireless networks are net neutral. It was because of this big hand of poker we'd played.”

“If they couldn't empathize with the host, how can I be helpful? Then it just shows somebody who is not equipped to build a startup because a startup is constantly about empathizing with your customer and your user, and then showing how can I make it easier for…”

“This is not concessionary capital. Crystal and I are the biggest investors in our fund. We are in this to make a lot of money.”

“So anytime we remove carbon from a process, it just gets cheaper. Carbon has an inherent value. It's necessary for a lot of the stuff we do, And it has a monetary value. And so any way we could take it out of building a product or running a service, we just ha…”

“AI and machine learning had so greatly accelerated progress in fusion that it was geometric now. It was a vertical curve. Because experiments used to take one to two years to run one experiment in a fusion reactor. Now they could run in high fidelity in the co…”

“I told the Dropbox guys that Google was going to crush them because we already had G Drive internally. I told the Airbnb guys that somebody was going to get raped or murdered and the blood was going to be on their hands when they were renting out a room in som…”

“We call that one 7.81 because we believe with that fund, we'll be able to pull 7.81 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere. And when we do so, we will reduce the parts per million in the atmosphere by one.”

“We have an electric airplane company in Sweden that even Bill Gates said was going to be impossible. It's a 35 seat plane that's got billions of dollars of cash on the barrel orders. And the majors have invested in the company because it's just cheaper to oper…”

“I don't manage for IRR. I manage for multiples. So we don't run a line of credit, for instance. That would be a much better way to eke out another point of IRR, but that's not how I want to run the business.”

“GPT five will be trained this year, and it'll be six to eight times better than four, maybe, maybe more.”

“So when it became clear, we are going to make some money. We just sat down with a bunch of people who had been through that process. And by the way, not just the successful people. We intentionally sat down with people whose marriages had completely dissolved,…”

“And our organization will only hire people who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day.”

“That is the number one hardest resource in all of tech is if you can't recruit and retain good talent, you're powerless. But when your employees won't stick around, that's the only thing that keeps you honest.”

“We're probably some of the most progressive people in technology, and certainly we help elect candidates who are going to raise our taxes.”

“What happens is we have this monoculture of these kids who, in computer science programs now, they've never had a job. Like, the toughest job they've ever had was being a teaching assistant for a class, and so they've never mowed lawns, waited tables, worked i…”

“We in our organization will only hire people Who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate that the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day of working …”

“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter that said, dude, you've got to stay out of the company.”

“So by the way, I mean, our comp plan probably runs six to 10 times what the industry standard is because I want everyone to materially, I want this to be a life-changing event.”

“And so we see this happen with, like, a company, Solugen, who's making industrial chemicals using enzymes instead of petroleum. These guys, like, they're, yes, their first VAT cost a lot of money, but they now are, you know, I don't know if I'allowed to say, b…”

“Absolutely. I'll get way richer from this. I mean, we have, I have multiple companies in the portfolio right now that have the very like they have a trajectory to being multi-trillion dollar market cap.”

“I say in every deal, we have to give ourselves a chance in that one deal to get rich. And this is because I've done, I did YC deals back in the day where I'd put 25 grand in and I'd sell the company for, you know, fifteen million dollars. My 25 grand became 75…”

“To investors who are up and coming, I think you need to consistently remind other investors of how you're helpful. So, you know, people are like, you know, Saka, you're self-promotional. I'm like, fuck yeah, I am. Like, that's part of the job is I have to cont…”

“We're probably some of the most progressive people in technology. And certainly we help elect candidates who are going to raise our taxes.”

“And our organization will only hire people who have had shitty jobs, who've had service jobs, who've worked extremely hard for some point in their life, and who appreciate that the worst day of being a VC doesn't begin to compare to the worst day of working in…”

“In the end, what pushed Travis out was when his team held him accountable. It was when the, you know, his 13 senior managers all wrote a letter and said, dude, you gotta stay out of the company.”

“Our comp plan probably runs six to 10 times what the industry standard is”

“A company, Solugen, industrial chemicals using enzymes instead of petroleum. Yes, their first VAT cost a lot of money, but they now are, you know, I don't know if I'allowed to say, but their run rate is ridiculous. Like, I'll fucking say it, like, nine-figure …”

“Guilt and shame aren't going to change behavior at scale, The only thing that's really going to get us there is offering people something that's better, cheaper, faster, cooler, sexier, easier to use, easier to maintain.”

“Uber's IPO would have gone very differently if they hadn't funded DoorDash.”

“The multiples are already there. I think IRR is 95% right now.”

“I saw Silicon Valley as the place that was most based on merit and least on seniority. Being in DC, you get exposed to politics, and politics is so much about have you earned your keep? Have you put in the time? Have you served? Have you risen up through the r…”

“When you spoke with them, even as the company was in its earliest days, they spoke with the voice of the inevitability of the growth and success of the company. And they weren't selling you. It wasn't that their heart rate rose, and they were trying to convinc…”

“When I retired lowercase, it was probably the most bankable I was. We walked away. Crystal and I retired it in 2016 to just say, This doesn't feel as compelling anymore for us personally. We don't love the impact we're having.”