Dec 4, 2020 · 1h 32m · allin
E14: Salesforce acquires Slack, DeepMind’s AlphaFold breakthrough, Trust Fund Socialists & more
David Sacks · 25m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 23m spoken Jason Calacanis · 19m spoken David Friedberg · 15m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In Episode 14 of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, and David Sachs examine major developments across enterprise software M&A, scientific AI breakthroughs, post-election politics, and corporate PR strategies. The discussion covers Salesforce's $27.7B acquisition of Slack, DeepMind's AlphaFold protein-folding discovery, political shifts following the 2020 election, and a defense of free-market capitalism.
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 100% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.9 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 2.9 The hosts pushing back 3.3
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:21:29 Chamath's rejection of trust fund socialist hypocrisy
Chamath passionately rejects trust-fund heirs dunking on capitalism, contrasting their privilege with his own upbringing in poverty in Sri Lanka.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:02:56 Sacks pushes back on JCal's GOP extinction claimSacks directly refutes JCal's premise that the GOP cannot win elections by pointing to their gains in the House and Senate.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 27:40 Friedberg educates the pod on protein foldingFriedberg systematically explains how DNA sequences determine amino acid chains and shape-driven biological function to educate the co-hosts.
The host holds their own ▶ 1:20:06 Friedberg's 500-year historical capitalism dataFriedberg presents historical macro data showing a 10x per capita gain in human consumption over 500 years to demonstrate the concrete benefits of capitalist industry.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Introductions, Wardrobe Banter, and Syndicate Teasing | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Light banter about wardrobe layering and joking about launching a syndicate without carry. | |
| Salesforce Acquires Slack and the Intercompany Edges Thesis | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Chamath details Social Capital's original investment thesis in Slack, focusing on intercompany edges rather than standard revenue metrics. | |
| Enterprise Sales Critique and the Salesforce Playbook | 8 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Sacks draws on his Yammer experience to critique Slack's delayed adoption of top-down enterprise sales. | |
| M&A Game Theory, Valuations, and the Yammer Backstory | 8 | 3 | 2 | 3 | The panel analyzes M&A information asymmetry before Sacks discloses Benioff's early buyout offer for Yammer. | |
| Investor Lessons: Holding Winners Versus Selling Early | 7 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Sacks and Chamath reflect on venture mistakes, emphasizing the importance of letting winning positions ride long term. | |
| DeepMind’s AlphaFold Breakthrough and Protein Folding | 9 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg delivers a masterclass on molecular biology and how DeepMind's AlphaFold solved the 50-year protein folding challenge. | |
| Bioweapon Risks, AI Ethics, and Digital Biology Defense | 8 | 3 | 4 | 4 | The group debates bioweapon risks, digital biology democratization, and the necessity of advanced biodefense. | |
| Rudy Giuliani, Georgia Runoffs, and Republican Strategy | 7 | 2 | 4 | 4 | Sacks analyzes how Giuliani's election challenge antics could jeopardize Republican turnout in the Georgia Senate runoffs. | |
| Legal Analysis of Presidential Pardons and Trump's Immunity Exposure | 7 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Sacks breaks down presidential pardon powers, explaining why federal pardons cannot protect against state-level prosecution in New York. | |
| Trump's Section 230 Veto Threat and Georgia Senate Impact | 6 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Chamath and Sacks discuss Trump's Section 230 defense veto threat and its political impact on defense-heavy Georgia. | |
| The Rise of Alternative Media and the GOP's Electoral Future | 7 | 3 | 5 | 5 | JCal and Sacks clash over whether the GOP strategy is sustainable given demographic shifts versus down-ballot House gains. | |
| Debating Millennial Trust Fund Socialists and the Impact of Capitalism | 8 | 3 | 6 | 6 | Chamath and Friedberg vigorously defend capitalism and economic mobility against millennial trust-fund socialists highlighted in the NYT. | |
| Analyzing The New York Times Hit Piece on Coinbase and Corporate PR | 7 | 2 | 4 | 4 | Sacks commends Coinbase for front-running the New York Times hit piece to pre-emptively neutralize media coverage. |
Statements from this episode (34)
Calacanis: Salesforce’s $27.7B Slack deal is highest SaaS acquisition price
“Salesforce in a record transaction for a SaaS company, I think it's the highest ever paid for a SaaS company, twenty seven billion dollars, 27.7 billion dollars for Slack, which has only been public for just over a year, I think.”
Chamath: Slack's 10M users generate more daily engagement than Facebook's 2B
“These guys have more usage on a daily basis than Facebook, which is stunning because you know, these guys have ten million da use and Facebook has two billion.”
Chamath: Slack under Salesforce will disrupt corporate email
“What they did get, whether they know it or not, is an intercompany edge effect, which is the most disruptive thing to email. And in the hands of Salesforce and that sales team, I think it has the ability to really Be a very disruptive force for good in enterpr…”
Sacks: Bottom-up SaaS products require sales teams to close enterprise deals
“The big learning from Yammer you know, we learned this at Yammer from 2008 to 2012 is that enterprises don't self-serve, right? They don't self-close. Bottom up, SAS products are phenomenal for generating top of funnel, basically generating leads, but you have…”
Calacanis: Slack had 87 customers spending over $1M per year
“This company, unlike Zoom, ah, should have been able to grow quicker, and if you look at their numbers, they had 87 companies that had, were spending over a million dollars.”
Calacanis: Elon Musk banned Salesforce at his companies over pricing dispute
“So much so, That I don't know if you remember Elon getting into a public spat with him where he's like, Salesforce is horrible software. Get it out of the organization. He basically banned it because they came to him with the bottom up people using of Salesfor…”
Sacks: Salesforce initially priced Chatter at $15 per seat versus Yammer's $5
“He launched his product to kind of be a clone of Yammer inside of Salesforce, but he was initially Charging 15 dollars per seat. We were charging like five.”
Sacks: Salesforce offered $250M for Yammer before opting to build Chatter
“They were interested in buying the company for around two hundred fifty million dollars.”
Sacks: Yammer sold to Microsoft for 5x Salesforce's $250M acquisition offer
“Anyway, it turned out to be much better for us because we ended up selling the company for five times as much to Microsoft.”
Chamath reveals he sold 50% of his Slack shares before acquisition
“For, of a hundred shares that I owned, per every hundred that I owned 10 of them I sold at 38 right at the direct listing. I want to say 40 of them I sold in the mid-twenties, and the rest of it just got taken out at this price.”
Sacks: Selling winning companies prematurely is an investor's biggest mistake
“One of my biggest learnings as an investor has been to let your winners ride. You know, my biggest mistake as an investor has not been the losers. It's all, it's been selling the winners prematurely.”
Chamath: Sold Facebook position in 2014 to buy Amazon and Tesla
“I sold it on Facebook in 2014 and bought Amazon and Tesla.”
Sacks: PayPal was acquired for $1.5B in 2002 versus $250B today
“PayPal is now a two hundred fifty billion dollar company. We sold it in 2002 for 1.5 billion.”
Friedberg: AlphaFold accuracy matches experimental microscopic measurement precision
“And the accuracy of their predictive model now is within the range of error of the microscopes that are being used to actually scan and measure those proteins.”
Friedberg: Alphabet spends $4B-$5B annually on Other Bets
“Alphabet's burning four to five billion dollars a year on their quote unquote other bets line.”
Friedberg predicts competitors will replicate DeepMind's AlphaFold within 24 months
“It's an inevitability that in the next couple of 24 months, someone else will replicate this.”
Friedberg: Biodefense will become a top global industry by late 21st century
“Biodefense is going to become probably one of the biggest industries on planet Earth starting in the latter half of this century, because you're going to get to a point where digital biology is like a tool just like software was in the eighties”
Friedberg: 50 protein-folding startups will be funded in 12-18 months
“I think we're within, within one year, J. Cal, of a lot of startups replicating this alpha fold technique, and then using that to go do drug discovery, and you'll see 50 startups getting funded 12 to 18 months from now based on some novel protein idea.”
Friedberg: Will invest in biodefense tech over application layer
“I will make my first series of bets less on the application and more on the protection. I think biodefense 30 years from now is going to be so important.”
Sacks: Trump's election challenges will cost Republicans the Georgia Senate runoffs
“Well, it's not working, and it looks like it's gonna cost Republicans to the Senate, which is something that I think he won't come back from.”
Sacks: Trump faces no federal legal risk, only New York trouble
“And so I don't think Trump has anything to worry about federally. I think the problem is is New York.”
Sacks predicts Biden's OMB director nominee will not be confirmed
“I don't think she's going to get through.”
Chamath: Joe Biden will leave Donald Trump alone post-presidency
“And I don't think it'll matter, because I think Biden will leave him alone, and it will not help his biggest risk.”
Sacks predicts Republicans will win back the House in 2022 midterms
“They almost certainly will win back the House and retire Nancy Pelosi in two years during the midterm election. I'll put money on that right now.”
Calacanis: Republicans will never win presidency with Trump's strategy
“They're just never going to win the presidency again. With this strategy.”
Chamath: $30 trillion wealth transfer will occur over 20 years
“And we are about to go through over the next 20 years, 30 trillion dollars of wealth transfer.”
Chamath: Eliminating US student debt requires just 3% of upcoming wealth transfer
“If enough people took their inheritance and decided to eradicate student debt, it would be three percent of what's going to be inherited over the next 20 years.”
Calacanis: Bezos's $10B pledge is the largest single-cause donation ever
“Ten billion dollars is the largest contribution ever made for to a single cause.”
Friedberg: Capitalism increased per-capita human consumption nearly 10x over 500 years
“And so the capitalist incentive has driven the ability while population has grown 14 x over the last 500 years. It's driven a nearly 10 x increment in what is available for humans to consume. Per capita during that period of time.”
Friedberg: AlphaFold will significantly extend human lifespan through drug discovery
“And the output of that is going to be an incredible new tool for drug discovery that is going to extend human lifespan in an incredible way.”
Chamath: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was right to create an apolitical workplace
“I'll say this about Brian Armstrong. I have a lot of respect for him for making a stand. I think every CEO has that, right? And I'm glad that at the end of the day, the employees at Coinbase were given A humane way of making a decision to be on the same page w…”
Sacks: Coinbase's preemptive blog post successfully neutralized The New York Times
“It was a really brilliant PR tactic by Coinbase because what it did is it almost like released a spike protein, you know, by sort of a pre-announcing New York Times story, it created this spike protein that trained the immune system of Silicon Valley to be rea…”