May 22, 2021 · 1h 30m · allin
E33: Apple’s hypocrisy, America fails math, crypto’s regulatory correction, Clubhouse, UFOs & more
Jason Calacanis · 22m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 22m spoken David Sacks · 22m spoken David Friedberg · 11m spoken
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In Episode 33 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, and David Friedberg analyze corporate activism at Apple, US math education reform, Biden's infrastructure tax plans, Clubhouse's decline, cryptocurrency regulation, China's tech crackdown, and Pentagon UFO disclosures.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.3 Guest teaching 4.2 Guest disagreement 4.0 The hosts pushing back 4.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:02:17 Jason calls Sacks naive on China state power
Jason aggressively attacks Sacks' claim that China cannot ban Bitcoin, calling it the 'most naive, worst take you've ever had'.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:21:05 Sacks rejects charitable framing of DA donorsSacks firmly shuts down Jason's attempt to give billionaire donors like Dustin Moskovitz the benefit of the doubt on funding progressive district attorneys.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 52:35 Friedberg pinpoints product flaw in ClubhouseFriedberg clearly explains why a purely synchronous live audio network fails compared to asynchronous video platforms like YouTube.
The host holds their own ▶ 46:10 Chamath cites 10-year inflation breakeven metricsChamath demonstrates deep market knowledge by citing Federal Reserve 10-year breakevens dropping 13 basis points to argue market consensus on inflation is shifting.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple's Hypocrisy & The Ousting of Antonio García Martínez | 7 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Sacks provides a detailed structured breakdown of Apple's managerial failures, distinguishing between the employee petition mob rule and executive cowardice. Jason pushes back gently on the framing around the offensive book quotes. | |
| US Math Proficiency, Standardized Testing, and Educational Equity | 7 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Sacks cites specific OECD international metrics showing US ranking 37th in math despite 5th in per-pupil spending. Friedberg plays devil's advocate regarding standardized testing favoring high-income families with tutors. | |
| Biden's Infrastructure Plan, Tax Reform, and Market Inflation | 8 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Chamath breaks down offshore IP tax loophole mechanisms, IRS litigation history, and macro financial indicators like 10-year inflation breakeven rates. Sacks analyzes government crowd-out effects on growth stock valuations. | |
| Clubhouse's Decline & David Sachs' Callin App Announcement | 7 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Jason provides exact user download drop-off numbers for Clubhouse. Friedberg educates the group on product mechanics, pointing out that missing asynchronous listening was a fundamental flaw. | |
| VC Power Laws & Andreessen Horowitz's Clubhouse Strategy | 8 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Chamath explains venture capital portfolio construction and risk management, noting a16z's $150M capital exposure on Clubhouse is minor relative to their $40B AUM while hunting power law returns. | |
| China's Tech Executive Crackdown Versus U.S. Governance | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | Jason aggressively rejects Sacks' claim that China cannot stop Bitcoin, calling it a naive take given state enforcement mechanisms. Sacks argues censorship resistance makes Bitcoin immune to complete suppression. | |
| Debating Crypto Black Swans and Reserve Currency Scenarios | 8 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Friedberg reframes the crypto debate by asking why investors benchmark Bitcoin against the US dollar rather than adoption and transaction metrics, challenging its underlying value proposition. | |
| Pentagon UFO Revelations and Sci-Fi Virtual Reality Theories | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Friedberg uses Arthur C. Clarke's thesis to educate the hosts on why advanced extraterrestrial civilizations would transmit information or local simulation rather than physically transporting matter. | |
| San Francisco Politics, DA Recalls, and Billionaire Donors | 7 | 4 | 6 | 6 | Sacks angrily calls out tech billionaires funding radical DAs in California. When Jason tries to offer a charitable interpretation about criminal justice reform, Sacks outright rejects the premise with specific victim examples. |
Statements from this episode (24)
Calacanis: Antonio García Martínez will probably receive a $10M settlement from Apple
“And of course, this led to a petition at Apple, which then led to him being fired, which now is going to lead to him probably getting a 10 million dollar settlement.”
Palihapitiya: Google could probably be run by 2,000 employees
“I've always thought like that company could probably run by 2000 people, but you know, there's 200,000 people. So the 198 other thousand of them need to find something to do.”
Palihapitiya: Facebook force stack-ranked to fire bottom 5-10% of employees
“When I was at Facebook, we used to convene the senior team. And, you know, I was like, I want, I really want to fire the bottom five or 10% of the company. And we would force stack rank and we did it for about three or four years.”
Sacks: US ranks last in math proficiency among 37 developed nations
“Math proficiency in the US, we rank 37 in the world, ok? And there's only 37 developed nations in the world, according to the developed, so we're last among developed countries.”
Sacks: UC system will never bring back SAT or ACT requirements
“And the University of California system has now abandoned the SAT and ACT. So they temporarily got rid of those requirements during the pandemic, but now they've used it as an excuse. They've never wasted a crisis. And now they say they're not bringing back th…”
Chamath: Closing offshore IP tax loophole will raise nearly $1T in US revenue
“One of the biggest features of the bill that has the most popularity is that they're closing this loophole around IP that sits outside the United States. And that more than the corporate taxes will raise almost a trillion dollars of revenue.”
Calacanis is overpaying for early-stage deals and skipping high-valuation rounds
“I'm going to selectively, you know, overpay compared to what we were paying a year or two ago. You know, if I really love a company, but I will sit out a lot of, I'm sitting out a lot of rounds right now that I just can't get my head around the valuation.”
Sacks: Public growth stock selloffs inevitably trickle down to venture valuations
“There's always a trickle down from gross stocks in the public markets to venture, right? Because the last private investors, like the big funds who do the super late stage stuff, they're just doing an arbitrage on what they pay versus what the company's going …”
Calacanis: Clubhouse downloads dropped from 9.5M in Feb 2021 to 922K in April
“And they had in, you know, two million downloads in January, 9.5 million in February of this year, and then came crashing down 2.7 million in March and 922 in April.”
Calacanis: Clubhouse reached a $4B valuation with zero revenue
“But at the same time, their valuation over 18 months Went from a hundred million in their seed when they had like three or 4000 users to a billion to four billion in the last round of financing for a company with zero revenue.”
Sacks says Twitter offered $4B to acquire Clubhouse and was rejected
“Well, they got a, they got an acquisition offer from Twitter for four billion, and they turned, they did this.”
Chamath: Andreessen Horowitz is set up to rival Sequoia
“They're basically set up to become Sequoia. If they really, I mean, I think if you think about like which two firms are really. Crushing on all cylinders right now, obviously Sequoia has always been the perennial number one, but if you think about the heater t…”
Chamath: Chinese government forced ByteDance and Pinduoduo founders to resign
“This is the same week where they basically, they've, they forced, you know, Zhang Yiming to resign from ByteDance. I mean, you know, last, last week it was, or last month it was the CEO of Pinduoduo.”
Sacks: The May 2021 Bitcoin crash is a good buying opportunity
“This is probably a pretty good buying opportunity. We've seen these crashes and Bitcoin many, many times over the years, it plummets down and then it goes back up and it eventually goes back up and reaches a new peak. So this is probably a pretty good entry po…”
Sacks: China will not succeed in stamping out Bitcoin
“And China can do its best to try and stamp it out, but I don't think they'll be successful at that.”
Calacanis: China will successfully eliminate Bitcoin within its borders
“They're not going to stop Bitcoin in the West, but they will stop it in China.”
Sacks: Oppressive government policies increase Bitcoin's value as digital gold
“I think that sort of digital gold is a phenomenal use case of Bitcoin, and the more oppressive all these countries become, the more they increase the value of that use case.”
Calacanis: US will launch a CBDC within two to three years
“The CBDC that the United States will launch in the next two or three years.”
Palihapitiya: Any fatal Bitcoin exploit would have happened in its first three years
“The way that it would have happened in the first two or three years.”
Calacanis: U.S. government acknowledges crafts exceeding military technology by centuries
“Our government says there are crafts that outtrip our arsenal by at least a hundred years to a thousand years at the moment, and we're like, meh.”
Friedberg: Physical alien spacecraft visits make no sense given advanced technology
“So that's the macro kind of argument against this notion that UFOs or aliens are in a physical spacecraft visiting. It's so old school technology that it makes no sense.”
Calacanis predicts San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin will be recalled
“We will get Chesa booted and recalled.”
Sacks claims Gascón's campaign received $5M each from Soros, Hastings, BLM
“Five million came from Soros, five million came from Reed Hastings, five million came from BLM.”
Sacks predicts progressive DAs nationwide will trigger public backlash
“This whole idea of these radical decarcerationists, they are running for DA in every major city. This is going to be a national trend, and they're going to cause a lot of carnage, a lot of death and destruction until the people realize, and there will inevitab…”