The Exchanges

Q Hold on, hold on. Can you actually just double click into that? What was your red pill moment? Was there one specific thing or was it more of a trickle of things?

A It was both, right? It's like it starts, the wall starts crumbling and then it comes down all at once. So for me, it really started Early in 23, I started reading Pirate Wires and Mike Solana, and I thought he was a little crazy at first, because he would write these articles. One he wrote was about how the Ukrainian soldiers had swastikas on their helmets, and the New York Times photographers would ask them to take the swastikas off for photos, and I said, that can't be right, that can't be true. And then four months later, it was in the New York Times, buried in the middle of the paper, and I kept Seeing stories like that, that, that he would be early on, and so I just started feeling uncomfortable and queasy about what was going on with mainstream media, and then in May of last year of 24, I read some article that talked about Trump's speech in Charlottesville, and this has been well covered, but, but where he said there was good people on both sides, and The article said it was completely, you know, propaganda and not what he actually, not accurately reflecting what he said that, uh, that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in his speech. And so then I went and watched that video. And that was my red pill moment. I think it was for a lot of people, because it wasn't just the media spinning it or politicians spinning it. That was like one of the pillars of why you were s…

AI assessment note: “And so then I went and watched that video. And that was my red pill moment.”

Q forced to remove TikTok from their app stores, and Oracle, TikTok's cloud provider, has to stop providing hosting services and cut ties, assuming ByteDance doesn't come up with a last minute deal. TikTok's only hope is the Supreme Court blocking the law. What do you think, Mark? Do you think it's Chinese spyware? Do you think they should be forced to divest? What do you think the repercussions will be?

A Here's what's so hard for me about this. On the one hand, part of it seems so obvious from a both, not just national security point of view, but also just fairness. Like, it's insane if you think about it, that there's a Chinese company that's arguing in court for protections under our constitution and freedom of speech, When none of our companies have those kinds of rights in China, much less the right to even operate there if they're not majority controlled or in line, like you guys talked about with censorship or whatever else. So on the one hand, it seems like a no brainer to me that on this case, but what you're starting to see come up in the last couple of days, I'm even hearing it from one of my daughters, who's a major TikToker is The law of unintended consequences here is that we could see this banned, especially if they don't get to a deal with somebody, and then the hundred and seventy million Americans, many younger Americans who rely on this, all sudden feel like this is censoring them, and it's taking away their freedom of expression, and it could backfire in a lot of ways, and we're already seeing memes where they're going on to these Other apps like there's this Chinese Redbook, which is even worse, right? I think that one is owned by the Chinese government. And so we're driving them there. And so, so I'm the best outcome, I think, would be forced to divest and …

AI assessment note: “the best outcome, I think, would be forced to divest and sell”

Q Like consulting firms, right? They all go to McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, whatever.

A Or even, I just, the class I taught on Monday at Stanford, they said, everyone wants a job at Meta or Google, and that's the get rich quick place, and it's, I don't even think that's necessarily true anymore, and they can't get those jobs because those companies are now trying to get rid of middle management. So those jobs have dried up. You know, part of what's in this data probably also is a lot of these people aren't taking jobs. They're not finding jobs that meet this high expectation for pay and opportunity. So I think it's a, I think it's a good thing. It also probably is going to reduce the demand to go into these MBA programs, because if you're thinking, well, that's not going to be my risk off trade, and I'm not going, I'm not going to be guaranteed, so why go in the first place? And I would advise people today, you know, to, depending on what industry, I'm biased, but I'd say go get a product management job somewhere and make enough that you can afford to live on it, and that's going to be the beginning of learning.

AI assessment note: “everyone wants a job at Meta or Google... So those jobs have dried up.”

Q them in the back. If you want to have some folks live on the construction site, and if you hit these dates, I'll pay you a bonus for hitting it. Doesn't seem like any of that would be wrong to me for somebody who had the ability to pay an incentive for somebody to move from another state would be out of line here. What are your thoughts on that?

A I agree. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty much just a free market believer. And so I think other than guardrails, like Chamath saying, and maybe I like the idea of cooling off periods. It kind of makes sense. But outside of that, when it comes to service providers, yeah, you have the opposite problem right now, which is like you're saying, you need to incentivize a huge construction force to come to LA and The cost for them to get there to find housing themselves is going to be even higher or the amount of distance they're gonna have to travel every day. So I think, I think this could have real unintended consequences and just stop the, just stop the wheels from turning on rebuilding all these homes, which make it way more complex. So I agree.

AI assessment note: “I agree. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty much just a free market believer.”

Q Okay, let me say differently. Would you have had the same bar if it was Jamie Dimon sitting across from you for a two hour lunch?

A No, no. So, so, so yes, it was, it was, wow, your grandfather is holding up really well. Like, your grandfather was able to have a whole lunch, and hold the conversation. But it wasn't, I didn't walk away saying, I have to admit, I did not walk away saying I think he's mentally unfit. But I did. But, and I wasn't shocked. But I was like, okay, this is someone who's being really handled and managed by people around him. And he's being told to show up here, say this, but I will say he was, he was not on an obvious script, which I know, I think famously he did some fundraiser at Vinod's house where he was reading a prompter the whole time. So wasn't reading a prompter. Yeah, that was it.

AI assessment note: “No, no. So, so, so yes, it was, it was, wow, your grandfather”

Q You have a point of view on UFO UAP phenomena?

A I do. And I guess everyone's, everyone else has too, so I won't be that weird an outlier. So first of all, I'll just say, I don't believe in UAPs, UFOs, and I don't not believe in them. I'm just curious about it. And I've, I've had this theory that something is going to happen, that we're going to break our current understanding of physics theory and our, our physics laws. And so I've been looking for that Moment. And one of those is around the UAPs. So I've been more and more curious and digging more and more. And I started working with a friend who made the movie Icarus on the idea of like a Netflix docuseries. I thought it should be funny and have somebody like a Larry David kind of character narrating it. But he said, maybe, maybe he came back to me. He he's making a documentary about fentanyl crisis and how it China documented how China has Dumped it here. And he said, you've got to meet with me and this guy. I came, while he was working on that, he was interviewing a former DoD contractor who had worked for them for decades and said, you know, I've got a lot on fentanyl, but I have this whole other thing to show you about these UAPs. And he, he'll just tell you his claim, his claim. So they came and met with me, and we had to Meet outside and put our phones in fairway bags.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe in UAPs, UFOs, and I don't not believe in them.”

Q Well, he fired his whole, do you remember when he fired his whole PR team? He fired all those people. There's just like, there's none of that infrastructure between him and, and everybody else.

A But do you remember when he would be on Twitter all the time post PayPal, trying to correct the story and just write long, long diatribes. And then, and then when a New York Times reporter said something negative about a Tesla, he just went off for weeks about them. And, and it seemed a little crazy and deranged. And then you started to see that it worked. Like he actually, and we were told, don't defend yourself. If something bad is written about you, you're going to prolong the press cycle. You're going to make the journalists angry, and so we've, we're now unshackled. I, I teach this class at Stanford, and I taught two back-to-back on Monday, and I looked around, and I saw half the placards said, you know, she, her, you know, he, him, his, and I got a little pang of like, oh, do I have to watch what I'm saying? Like, no, I don't. I'm unshackled. I'm just gonna, this is just, Me, and I'm going to be Mark unfiltered, and it's the better version of ourselves. So anyway, I, I'm glad that Zuck feels like he can be, he can present more of his complete self out there now, and I think we can get into it later, but I have a lot of thoughts on how the culture is going to kind of move more towards base.

AI assessment note: “you started to see that it worked... And so we've, we're now unshackled.”

Q You still have a job. You still work. What, what are your thoughts on, on this? Are MBAs out of vogue? Are they opting out? What's your theory here?

A Well, so yes, I went there. I, I would say that That my, all the learning that's helped me in my career started later after I got out. My first product management job was really when I started learning things that are useful to me today. I think being there, I learned a lot about like how to sell to corporate America and some how do they think kind of things. And then I've gone back to HBS for decades trying to recruit from there and In the beginning, they would tell me, the kids would, when I had support.com and it was going to go public, they said, I'd have to be a vice president and own three percent of the company to take a job with a startup like you, and this was just before the company went public. There was a little bit of a renaissance period where some HBS people were excited to join Zynga, probably because they thought it was going public, but they were a little more risk on at that point, and now everyone's open to jobs. My take is that there's this fundamental imbalance that people go and get an MBA because they're de-risking their career. You go to HBS or Stanford, and you're guaranteed this high salary and this kind of great job for life. So the reason to go there is to take the risk off. That's in fundamental opposition to where we are in our Economy, in my opinion today, are where the most interesting sectors are. Those kinds of jobs have dried up, and the kind…

AI assessment note: “My take is that there's this fundamental imbalance that people go and get an MBA”

Q you know, our industry, when we got into it 30 years ago, politics was not part of this. Occasionally, I don't know, McCain would show up at an event, and it was kind of an oddity, and people were just not interested, and now it's become an obsession. Um, what's your take on the best case scenario for this Presidency. For this term, what's the best thing that could happen?

A Well, I guess the best thing that could happen is, I think, probably delivering on Doge. I think that, that the potential disrupt, positive disruption there is that people could end up actually starting to have confidence in our government. And, and I think all of the mainstream media and all the haters, I just think it's gonna be hard to hate. If, if, if you get anything near the scenario like Melee, Has shown. I, in such fast time, I, I think it, it would just, I think it'd be amazing for the country on, on a lot of fronts. I, I, I think people are gonna have to acknowledge it if, if Doge actually delivers, and, and we need them to.

AI assessment note: “the best thing that could happen is, I think, probably delivering on Doge.”

Q Well, he fired his whole, do you remember when he fired his whole PR team? He fired all those people. There's just like, there's none of that infrastructure between him and, and everybody else.

A But do you remember when he would be on Twitter all the time post PayPal, trying to correct the story and just write long, long diatribes. And then, and then when a New York Times reporter said something negative about a Tesla, he just went off for weeks about them. And, and it seemed a little crazy and deranged. And then you started to see that it worked. Like he actually, and we were told, don't defend yourself. If something bad is written about you, you're going to prolong the press cycle. You're going to make the journalists angry, and so we've, we're now unshackled. I, I teach this class at Stanford, and I taught two back-to-back on Monday, and I looked around, and I saw half the placards said, you know, she, her, you know, he, him, his, and I got a little pang of like, oh, do I have to watch what I'm saying? Like, no, I don't. I'm unshackled. I'm just gonna, this is just, Me, and I'm gonna be Mark unfiltered, and it's the better version of ourselves. So anyway, I, I'm glad that Zuck feels like he can be, he can present more of his complete self out there now, and I think we can get into it later, but I, I have a lot of thoughts on how the culture is gonna kind of move more towards base.

AI assessment note: “we're now unshackled. I, I teach this class at Stanford”

Q obviously, but what do you think the Democratic Party does from here? Like, is it, everybody's like this, they're lost in a drift. We're not even hearing from them. Maybe a little bit of, uh, pushback, I guess, at these Senate hearings right now for confirmations, but what do you think happens? Is there any hope for this and, and who would lead them out of this? Shapiro? Somebody? AOC?

A I think that what my brain, my kind of intelligent front of brain would tell me the logical thing, which I think I want to say is one lens that I think we have to be careful not to just apply logic here because it's parties and, and the Democrats. But the logic would say, oh, they're going to find based, authentic people to put up against these other ones, like the kind of Fetterman types that They're gonna put those people forth who are more centrist and also are more trustworthy that they're actually authentic in their flaws. That's what my brain would tell me. I think there'll be a little of that, that the party I believe will move more that way. I think that the corporate candidates aren't going to fly anymore with the electorate. I think that the managed corporate through sound bites can't do a long form things like this. I think that's over and we can get into that later if we want, but I think. They won't go as far as they should. So, so they, the, they won't go as far as like what I think we would intelligently advise them to do. So I, so that's as much as I can figure out that they should do that, but they won't.

AI assessment note: “they're going to find based, authentic people to put up against these other ones”

Q ice engines. Uh, it's great for cabs, great for pedestrians, and great for bike riders. The only people really complaining are selfish and entitled people who drive their cars into Manhattan. That's at least my position on it. Opponents are saying it's a money grab for the transit authority, because the money from this goes to make public transportation better. What do you think, Mark? You're in favor of this?

A Yeah, I think more generally, I feel like since the pandemic, what's been on my mind a lot, living still in San Francisco, I wanted to start a social network called Still Here. It's like, oh, you still live here? Me too. Some way for us to, like, come out of our houses and notice that you're here and I'm here, but we never leave our homes. I walk around this city at my own risk, and I look, the cities, I feel like cities have lost the point. Like, they've lost the plot. Like, why, we've kind of, we still live in cities or value them, but I feel like we have to go back to first principles and think, like, why did we move to cities in the first place and what was the value supposed to be? And is that still the deal we're getting? Or is there to have to be a new deal? Because we used to live in a city because it was economic. We were closer to our job. And then we lived in a city because there was a high density of things that we wanted, cultural people, restaurants, and the best cities really were the ones that are fun to walk around. And then we got to a point where it's not safe or clean to walk around. You don't work in the city anymore. And San Francisco started to feel like this gigantic, like retirement community. It's just all these people who still live here because their kids are in school, maybe, or they grew up here. You know, a lot of our friends left, went to Austin …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I think more generally, I feel like since the pandemic”