Mar 19, 2020 · 1h 31m · allin
E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
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In the debut episode of the All-In Podcast, hosts Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg analyze the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic across public health policy, macroeconomic stability, startup survival strategies, and personal lifestyle shifts. They advocate for mass antibody testing, FDA regulatory relief, extended cash runways for startup founders, and ethical corporate bailout terms while reflecting on changing consumer psychology.
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 99.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 7.0 Guest teaching 5.5 Guest disagreement 2.1 The hosts pushing back 2.9
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:02:07 Refuting the WFH Productivity Narrative
Chamath forcefully interrupts and rejects the premise that employees are working effectively from home during lock-downs, calling it 'a joke' and 'a lie'.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 55:46 Challenging Corporate Equity WipeoutsJason refuses Chamath's proposal to wipe out equity in corporate bailouts, pushing back with the counterargument that pension funds like CalPERS would suffer severe damage.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:51 RT-PCR Chemistry and BottlenecksFriedberg educates the panel on why testing takes days, walking step-by-step through RT-PCR blood chemistry, multi-machine cycles, and automation limitations.
The host holds their own ▶ 41:24 Overnight Repo Market BreakdownChamath demonstrates authoritative expertise in macroeconomics by detailing how short-term repo collateral functions and why frozen credit markets trigger broader economic seizures.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assessing COVID-19 Health, Policy, and Economic Supply Chain Risks | 5 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Friedberg systematically outlines the three dimensions of the crisis (health, policy, markets) and warns about supply chain vulnerabilities like food security following auto plant closures. The hosts facilitate with broad framing questions. | |
| Asymptomatic Transmission Data and Mass Antibody Testing Strategy | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Friedberg cites emerging data from Korea, the Princess Cruise ship, and NBA players to argue that asymptomatic rates skewed initial fatality models. Chamath demonstrates solid understanding by bringing up IgG antibody testing vs PCR testing. | |
| Triaging FDA Regulations for COVID-19 Therapeutics | 6 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Chamath presses on why the CDC and FDA hesitate to endorse therapeutics like chloroquine. Friedberg explains the institutional conflict between standard clinical trial protocols and emergency triage policy. | |
| Nuanced Containment Strategies, Isolation Thresholds, and Understanding R0 | 5 | 7 | 2 | 3 | Jason asks whether economic containment is worth the trade-off based on fatality estimates. Friedberg reframes the binary choice into a nuanced age-bracketed containment strategy informed by R0 calculations. | |
| Financial Market Seizures and Civil Liberty Trade-offs for Testing | 8 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Chamath takes center stage to explain capital market seizures and proposes a national testing infrastructure model utilizing voting sites and the National Guard. | |
| Startup Survival Tactics and VC Portfolio Restructuring | 9 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Jason gives practical burn-rate advice before Chamath delivers an expert breakdown of institutional LP asset allocation dynamics, illiquidity premiums, and why startups need 36 months of runway. | |
| Federal Reserve Interventions and Overnight Repo Market Mechanics | 9 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Chamath breaks down the mechanics of the overnight repo market, explaining how hedge fund leverage and collateral re-hypothecation lead to market seizures during volatility. | |
| Testing Infrastructure Bottlenecks and Global COVID-19 Trajectories | 6 | 7 | 3 | 3 | Friedberg educates the hosts on the chemical and procedural bottlenecks of RT-PCR testing versus point-of-care assays, while Chamath criticizes passive billionaire responses. | |
| Corporate Bailout Ethics, Share Buybacks, and Federal Stimulus | 8 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Chamath forcefully critiques corporate share buybacks in the airline industry and argues for equity wipeouts. Jason pushes back by pointing out potential collateral damage to retail pension funds. | |
| Economic Contraction and Shifting Consumer Psychology | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 | Friedberg outlines GDP contraction math while Chamath dismisses the work-from-home productivity narrative and reflects on changing consumer psychology. | |
| Reshoring Supply Chains, Healthcare Reform, and Geopolitics | 8 | 6 | 3 | 4 | The hosts and guest discuss supply chain reshoring, the regulatory trade-offs in healthcare, and the transition from hyper-efficient globalism to national economic resilience. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Calacanis asserts harassment rings hire people for $10 daily
“They, they've got all these, like, sophisticated rings of people that they just hire for 10 bucks a day to harass people online. I mean, I know it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but it's actually true.”
Friedberg: The world operates on a 30-day global food supply
“The world lives on a 30 day food supply, so if you stopped food production today, there would only be 30 days of food for the whole world to eat based on our calorie consumption per day, and especially with an isolated border, and we import a lot of food in th…”
Friedberg: Shutting down food factories will cause a food security crisis
“If that means that we are then going to shut down other factories, the Ford GM shutdown, and we're going to shut down food production, processing, and distribution factories, then we have a food security crisis, and this becomes a real societal problem.”
Friedberg: Nearly 40% of infected South Koreans aged 20-29 were asymptomatic
“And in Korea in particular, they found a large cohort, nearly 40% of the infected population were people between 20 and 29 years old that did not exhibit any symptoms or had very mild symptoms, had a runny nose, and didn't even know that they were sick.”
Friedberg: Up to 86% of COVID cases in China were unreported or mild
“A paper published showed that in China, up to 86% of people did not realize that they were sick, or they were unreported, and they had mild symptoms.”
Friedberg: High asymptomatic rate means actual COVID-19 fatality rate is much lower
“If you take that high level, you take that low level, call it somewhere between 25 and 86%, maybe even as high as 86% of patients are asymptomatic, which means that the actual fatality rate is much, much lower even in a large cohort that gets infected here.”
Friedberg admits personally buying unapproved COVID-19 antibody tests online
“There are a lot of people I know that have bought them on the internet. I have a bunch of them.”
Friedberg: US COVID-19 fatality rate will likely be 0.15% to 1.8%
“If I were to put my money on this, look, I'm a betting guy. I would be a little bit nervous at this point, but I'd say it's probably somewhere between .15 and call it 1.8%, you know, call it, that's an order of magnitude, I know. So, you know, but you could do…”
Palihapitiya: 2020 market liquidity freezes are worst seen since 2008 crisis
“We are in a moment that I have really not seen since oh eight where there are seizures in this market in extremely violent ways.”
Palihapitiya: Mass testing and isolation could suppress COVID-19 in 4-6 weeks
“If you're found to be An asymptomatic carrier, then you can self quarantine and socially distance, and we can really you know, nip this thing in the bud in a, you know, four, five, six week time frame.”
Calacanis: No VC money will be raised for at least 3-6 months
“Assume it's gonna, that no money's gonna get raised for the next three or six months at a minimum.”
Friedberg: 4 of my 12 board companies were mid-deal when COVID hit
“I'm on 12 boards. Four companies have been or are in the middle of term sheet or closing a deal, so it's been an unfortunate timing for all this stuff.”
Chamath: Forced VC markdowns in 6 months will kill follow-on funding
“When these markdowns are forced to happen, which will take another six months venture capitalists returns will look terrible. And so their propensity to be able to add bad dollars after good quote unquote, you know, to defend every company is going to go to ze…”
Chamath: Startups need at least 36 months of cash runway
“So I don't think 18 months is sufficient. I think you need at least 36 months.”
Friedberg: Broad COVID-19 mass testing is about 45 days away
“I think getting over the first hump is happening in the next, call it seven to 10 days, and so then it's probably another 30 to 45 days before we get these tests For general population testing, more broadly distributed. So call it 45 days out.”
Chamath: Wealth and crisis contribution are inversely correlated during COVID-19
“Thus far, there's largely been an inverse correlation of contribution And wealth during all of this.”
Chamath: US airline industry spent 96% of free cash flow on buybacks
“The airline industry, which looks like it's going to be first in line for bailout, Spent 96 cents of every single dollar free cash flow they had on buying back stock”
Chamath: The Eurozone will collapse and Japan is finished
“The Eurozone is going to collapse. Okay. Japan is finished.”
Friedberg: A three-month US economic shutdown costs $4.5 trillion
“The GDP of the United States is 20 trillion dollars, roughly. Every month, let's assume the whole economy shuts down. Every month that we're shut down costs us 1.5 trillion dollars. So if we're going to have the country shut down for say three months, we're lo…”
Palihapitiya: Claims of work-from-home productivity during lockdowns are a lie
“Jason, the shoe, guys, the shoe that hasn't dropped is this idea that everybody is at home working. Nobody's at home working. That's a joke. That's a lie.”
Palihapitiya: Pandemic will shift world from globalization to nationalized economies
“I do think that we're going to swing the pendulum back towards nationalized economies and away from global economies, because I think this is a way that politicians all around the world, they'll characterize it in different political language.”
Chamath: Apple should be forced to bring manufacturing to US
“Apple should probably be forced to bring a lot of their production capacity back into the United States. They should find a diversified global supply chain so that you have multiple suppliers in many countries in the world. But they should rely more on America…”
Friedberg: US will likely shift toward federalized right-to-try laws
“I think we're gonna maybe see a big shift in policy and allow right to try laws that are gonna be federalized so, you know, states can make decisions about right to try laws and doctors and patients can try drugs on their own discretion without having a federa…”
Chamath: Global economy must optimize for resiliency over efficiency
“Because the world of just-in-time efficiency, I think we're learning now was the wrong optimization for the world. We need to optimize for resiliency, and that means some amount of inefficiency.”
Chamath: Cities will open green zones for antibody-tested individuals within six weeks
“I think that the emerging evidence will soon be hard to ignore that we have a denominator problem, which means that we're not testing enough, and that these IgG and IgM tests will come online at scale in the next two weeks. And that we will establish, ah, dema…”
Friedberg: US West Coast will reopen for business around April 7th or 8th
“New York is going to be fucked for a little while, but I do think that the west coast and with some travel restrictions is going to be able to reopen for business probably around April seventh or eighth, because we're going to see a dramatic decline at that po…”