SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. It's Monday. Congratulations to the Warriors on their big win. To start the show, I talk with independent candidate for California's new governor, Michael Schellenberger on what he wants to improve in California. Molly, it's a really fascinating interview. He's kind of like a moderate and he's running as an independent. I am voting for him in the primaries because I would like to see somebody who's a

SPEAKER_02: moderate, at least debate, even if they have a small chance of winning. I'd like to see him

SPEAKER_04: debate and primaries are tomorrow, by the way, if you are in California. And as we've discussed, if you're going to vote, I mean, please vote and also vote in primaries turns out. Yeah, very important. Speaking of which, I got to fill out my ballot. So that's going to be super interesting. Then we cover Apple's 2022 WWDC announcements and array of updates, including some dishy new iMessage features, a new chip for the Apple Silicon family, and then possibly the absolute, uh, like a bomb of the announcement. Pay later.

SPEAKER_08: Buy now, pay later. Yeah. Coming to Apple, uh, really, really, uh, interesting stuff. And, um,

SPEAKER_00: after that we cover, uh, a report from Reuters, uh, that finance has had $2.35 billion worth of illicit funds laundered through their system. You know, talking drugs, investment frauds,

SPEAKER_09: hacks and everything in between, uh, pretty gnarly stuff, but it looks like the chickens are coming

Jason Calacanis: home to roost in the crypto space. It's fascinating. And since we know you missed us over the weekend, we just keep on going. We've also got Elon Musk accusing Twitter of withholding material

SPEAKER_02: bot information. Big news there. And finally, uh, Beijing is wrapping up its DD investigation.

SPEAKER_09: The stock's gone up a bit and, uh, but they're moving from the West and listing their stock publicly here to now the decoupling of China and America. They're going to be listed DD on the Hong Kong stock exchange. So it's going to be a great episode. Stick with us.

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SPEAKER_16: member FDIC equal housing lender. Hey everybody. Next up on the show, Michael Schellenberger, uh,

SPEAKER_17: who is an independent candidate for California governor. Now we don't often talk about tech here on this week in startups because it's this week in startups. We're here to talk about startups, capital allocating into them and technology innovation and entrepreneurship. It's kind of our wheelhouse here, but, um, one of the things facing the tech industry is the absolute mismanagement of not only California, but more specifically the Bay area and then drilling down into their San Francisco. And I've watched this firsthand having moved to California, um, in my early thirties, almost 20, yeah, 20 years ago. Exactly. And then moving up to the Bay area, almost 10 years. Exactly. So I did 10 years in LA, 10 years in San Francisco, uh, and also the wider Bay area in the peninsula in the suburbs, basically. So I've gotten a really firsthand look at this and watched as Los Angeles, um, devolved, uh, and also as California surged in some ways. And then the utter collapse that occurred right as my 10 years here, I watched San Francisco boom, and all the tech companies suddenly want to base themselves in San Francisco. And now getting a startup to come to a meeting in San Francisco is essentially an impossibility. So we're gonna unpack that with Michael Schellenberg.

SPEAKER_20: Welcome to the program, Michael. Great to be with you. Good to see Jason. Good to see you,

SPEAKER_17: you guys, you and I met socially, uh, recently, and, uh, we had a nice talk, uh, and you are a resident of the Bay area. I don't know if you say the specific town you're from, uh, or not. I don't

SPEAKER_22: want to Mike. Berkeley Hills. Yeah, totally. So I will Mike. I don't micro target myself. I just,

SPEAKER_23: you know, generally say I live in the wider Bay area, but you're in Berkeley, uh, which is, um,

SPEAKER_17: a really, uh, avant garde, uh, liberal area. And, um, you're running for governor, why are you running? Because you could be doing other things with your time. And it does seem like

SPEAKER_25: California and the Bay area and Los Angeles are absolutely collapsing and losing, you know, uh, you know, from, from, from end to end here, losing companies, uh, losing great entrepreneurs, losing capital allocators, quality of life has plummeted. Housing prices has soared. The education system is totally in disarray, homelessness slash addiction. And we'll get into that and double click on how we frame that issue. It's a disaster. And you want to go in here and try to be in charge.

SPEAKER_17: Why did, would you want to take on what to most of us would seem an insurmountable challenge?

SPEAKER_28: Sure. Well, the main reason is I'm completely heartbroken by the destruction of our state

SPEAKER_30: and by the humanitarian disaster that we call homelessness. We're dealing with open air drug markets, open air drug scenes that are killing people. I just wrote a piece about how there's three times more homeless deaths in Los Angeles between 2020 and 2021 than in New York. The reason is that in New York, they, they have sufficient homeless shelters and they make people sleep in them rather than sleep outside. So we're completely managed, mismanaging this. The school's student performance has gotten worse. We're in the fourth season of blackouts and water shortages. And we pay the highest taxes, the highest gasoline prices in the highest and the most for electricity of anybody in the continental United States. So we have the highest cost of living and the worst public services. It's a leadership problem. You know, it's, we just don't have the leaders, the political leadership to make the, the, I guess I would say tough decisions. I don't think that they're super complicated. Actually, it's simple things like raising educational standards, requiring, you know, shutting down the open air drug scenes, having sufficient shelter and psychiatric hospitals and group homes for the sick, raising educational standards rather than lowering them, building power plants, water storage facilities, desalination plants. It's basically a pro civilization agenda. This is just the basics of civilization. So it's in that spirit that Mark Andreessen wrote about it during the beginning of pandemic of build. We need abundant housing, water energy. We need functioning schools. There's not a lot of magic here or shortcuts. It's just really buckling down and doing the common sense things we need to do. And I guess that's the frustrating

SPEAKER_17: part for those of us who love the state of California and then the cities within it. It is such an amazing place to live in so many different, uh, dynamics. I mean, you can go skiing in Tahoe and surf in Malibu. You can, uh, do everything in between. We have the wine country, uh, you know, everything from San Diego to Los Angeles, the central valley. It's just a wonderful place. Uh, and I've been totally captivated and fallen in love with it as well. Um, in, in, in my, uh, thirties and forties. And now I'm considering leaving. And the thing that I wonder is if it's also obvious, we need to build more housing. We need to get out of the way when somebody like Elon wants to build a factory. And he said at the all in summit, you know, that he would still be papering the applications for his, uh, Texas gigafactory, which I got to tour and he built that in under 18 months and in 18 months in California would be an impossibility. And so we have a hundred billion dollar surplus. We, we don't want for money, but we yet have, and people want to be here.

SPEAKER_35: So with all of this obvious solutions, I guess the question, and, and I think it's important to understand in each of these vectors, and we have a limited amount of time, obviously, but in each of these vectors, how did we become so ineffective? Let's start with housing. What is the dynamic that has made it impossible? We hear about NIMBY. We hear about EMB of, you know, and as concisely as

SPEAKER_17: possible, why is this so screwed up? And then how do you fix it?

SPEAKER_30: Sure. I mean, I think on housing, this is arguably the toughest issue. So it's great to dive in. I mean, we don't have, we have abundant land, but we don't have abundant housing. And there's just basically, it's an over-regulated sector. We waive the main environmental quality act, California environmental quality act for building a stadium, but we won't waive it for building apartment units for our workers. We've allowed hyper-local control to prevent that housing. Also, the law is abused by a small group of labor unions. I do believe a majority of Californians would like to see more housing. There needs to be sort of a consensus built. There's a need to kind of have a broader consensus in the society that we don't have. I will say too, I think that the people that have the strongest interest in adding housing is the tech community. The problem is that there's very little loyalty to California from the new capitalist entrepreneurial class. You know, so you have effectively an aristocracy, a kind of landed feudal aristocracy holding on to older form of development, not wanting the new development. And then you've got an entrepreneurial class that's just not loyal to this place, they will move to Miami, they'll move to Austin, they'll move to other parts of the country. So, you know, usually when you have like the Rockefellers, Carnegie's and Mellons, they would make their fortunes and they'd be rooted in a place and then they would fund the politicians and the others to usher in a kind of new form of development, including, you know, upgrading the housing in the cities. That's partly happened with me. I've been supported. It's now public. I've been supported by David Sachs and other people that are high tech, successful high tech people in California. But, you know, honestly, there hasn't been, there's not a machine in place. I mean, we're creating the political machine for a pro abundance agenda. And that hasn't existed until I ran.

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SPEAKER_41: team for making a great product that we love and enjoy. Yeah, I mean, it seems like this is kind of from

SPEAKER_17: out of left field that you're you even exist as this kind of unicorn candidate, who is socially liberal, and maybe just wants to get stuff done and isn't, you know, part of the far left agenda or the Trump far right agenda, you're the moderate, I think a lot of folks have been looking for, why should the technical class, the capital allocators be loyal to the state when you have somebody like Gonzalez telling Elon, or saying F you Elon, and you're raising our taxes, and the regulations are absurd. And the politicians are blaming the billionaires and blaming the companies for causing all these problems. Why should we be loyal? When Mayor Suarez is saying, Hey, come here, we'll get we'll get out everything out of the way. We want you here. When Abbott and other folks in Texas and Austin are saying, Hey, we want you here. If you want to build a factory, we're going to make it happen and get everything out of the way. Hey, you need housing, we're going to get housing built, and we're going to do it fast. Why should the people who are builders in the world be loyal to California if loyal if California politicians are outrightly hostile to our very existence?

SPEAKER_33: Yeah, well, that's a good reason not to be and I think that's why tech technical, you know, tech

SPEAKER_30: entrepreneurs have been fleeing the state quite understandably, I don't blame them for it. The governor, you know, we basically you have the governor knew some, but the others in the political elite take us for granted. I mean, they they and they take you for granted. They make us pay the highest taxes has cost of living and they don't deliver on basic public services. I mean, the disrespect particularly shown to Elon Musk by I guess one of the I'm not just the president of the Senate, but Lorena Gonzalez, of course, famously said F you to him on on Twitter. Yeah, he said message received. Obviously, I would be I would I would be calling up entrepreneurs trying to get them to come back. You know, look, I think the main reason that anybody is loyal to California is that we just think it's a spectacular state for all the reasons that you just gave. I mean, there's just no other state like it. I mean, I fell in love with California when I first visited as a boy. When I travel around the state now, I'm still I was just in Santa Monica, which is, you know, I certainly been to Santa Monica, but I start to go into the neighborhoods and you're just like, Oh my gosh, it's like the most amazing place in the world. Yeah, I got to the reason to fight for California is because we love it.

SPEAKER_50: Yeah, there's no reason it can't be a great state. I don't think we'll ever be like Texas

SPEAKER_30: in allowing the kind of unregulated development that they have in Texas. But I don't think we have to be like Hawaii either. You know, I think there's I think we want to be the Goldilocks principle here between Hawaii and Texas. There is a lot of land. I mean, anybody that flies over California, there's plenty of land. Yeah, there's there's much more room for density in cities. What I'm proposing is a really simple idea called a citizen's jury where you in panel several hundred randomly selected representative sample of the electorate to deliberate in 12 town hall meetings across the state 12 cities 12 months to deliberate and build consensus so that you can go back to the legislature with a housing, a pro housing abundance agenda. If the legislature rejects it, let's say January 2024, you then have time to put on the ballot and put it up to voters. You know, we end up passing a lot of things on ballot initiatives in California. And I would do that with housing, education, and then energy slash water, since the two things are so related. Because ultimately, I think there is an ideological obstacle. I think there's sort of a public consensus obstacle. But as the governor of the state, you have a lot of power to bring people together and then decide if everybody just wants to be like Hawaii and not build any more houses, then the public decides that that may be what it is. And then entrepreneurs can decide whether there's really worth staying in San Francisco and LA. But that's clearly not the case here. I mean,

SPEAKER_17: the people in the state, overwhelmingly want to lower taxes, they overwhelmingly want to build more housing, they overwhelmingly want to address, you know, the the fentanyl crises, and the drug addiction crises, which has been framed as homelessness. So let's talk about that. In San Francisco, we've watched and my office used to be in the Tenderloin. And I had to move it because people were being stabbed outside of our office. And we watched over, you know, five, six year period, that we went from two or 3000 homeless people to what felt like 10,000 or so I think the numbers show that. And it was distinctly different than, you know, what I experienced in New York City in the 80s and 90s of homelessness and the modest homelessness in Santa Monica I witnessed in Venice. Um, you know, in the 2005 2000. Yeah, 10 2005 era, it all of a sudden got very different, it seems to have correlated with the super drug fentanyl. And it does seem to correlate as well with the non ability to prosecute the dealers. Um, and maybe hold people to a specific standard. Um, you wrote an entire book on this, but looking at it from the outside, and my basic research, it seems like people who are horribly addicted to opioids and fentanyl have a very low chance of recovery, maybe 5%. So this is a basically a problem of addiction that is not going to be solved in the overwhelming majority of cases. So what is a society to do? Well, I think we know what we can't do, which is make it actually profitable for dealers to be here, and make it profitable in some way for people around the country who are addicted to say the number one destination if you're addicted to these things is California. Because if you're living in one of these other states, I mean, if you're in the south, if you're in Texas, and you're addicted to this, you're going to be arrested, and you're going to eventually wind up in jail for stealing or whatever it is tragically. But the cost of being a dealer or addiction is high in some other states, and it's zero here. Is that basically the core of the problem? Because I've read some of your tweets on the on the problem here? How do you and you wrote a whole book on it? But how do you frame it as a problem? And the reality of it? And then what is the specific

SPEAKER_28: tactics that need to occur? Yeah, you basically have a right? I mean, the data is not great. But we

SPEAKER_30: know that the number of homeless people in California increased 31%, even as the number declined 18% in the rest of the United States over the last 10 years. San Francisco saw a significant increase. Again, the counts aren't great, but somewhere between nine and 10,000 total homeless in San Francisco, probably five to 7000 on the streets. At any given time, we know 20,000 homeless people come through San Francisco every year for the open drug scene, which is which is allowed. It did get worse after 2014, which is when we decriminalize up to three grams of hard drugs, and also decriminalize shoplifting $950 worth of goods. And you saw that arrests for shoplifting declined from around arrests per reports declined from 60% in around 2014 to just 17% today. So there's people's experiences reality. Of course, you also have two overlapping drug epidemics. One is the opioids, which is most people are most famous for, of the 105,000 drug deaths last year, 71,000 were from fentanyl alone. But methamphetamine is also a big problem. So we find people smoking methamphetamine, and fentanyl. A lot of the psychosis, you see people taking off their clothes, people screaming, some of that may be from underlying mental illness, but often it's just paranoid psychosis induced by long term method uninterrupted methamphetamine use. Yeah, people used to be arrested and have to spend some time in jail where they would get off drugs for a period of time. You know, it's not rocket science. I mean, you have to shut down the open drug scene, you can't let people sleep outside. You don't have to go to shelter, but you can sleep outside, you can go somewhere else, we need to detox the people. As an alternative to jail and prison, Americans were very libertarian. So we're uncomfortable diagnosing people and being like, you need to go get treatment just because you're an addict, or you need to go to psychiatric hospital just because you're mentally ill. So breaking the law tends to be the thing that gets people into the help they need, which is why you need to enforce laws. What's that? It's the backstop, you know,

SPEAKER_17: because we believe in America, and it's one of the beautiful things about America is personal freedom, you have a choice. A person who is addicted to these super drugs, and let's face it, these are unlike, you know, a lot of the drugs we're considering decriminalizing or legalizing. I mean, some, in fact, may have properties that they're studying at Stanford and John Hopkins, MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, you know, ketamine, I mean, the science behind these things actually helping people in a proper context with therapists is extraordinary. So we are specifically talking about two super drugs here. 71% of the of the deaths are coming from fentanyl and then some amount from methamphetamine, right? But every addict you'll speak to, and this is where the data is irrefutable. The addicts who do recover say that consequences of their behavior became the impetus for them to then change their life. And this is where, you know, bringing up tough love, making a decision for somebody who's incapable of making the decision for themselves. It's very hard for Americans. And in a way, it's a beautiful intent that we want to help people and we want them to make their own decision. But it might also be unrealistic in the super drug category. And any family who's dealt with addiction, you know, the richest families in the world with kids on oxy or, you know, brothers and sisters is incredibly tragic. They could be on high price drugs, low price drugs, they could be functional, or they could be on the street. But the fact is, the consequences, eventually are the backstop in America. And we have removed the backstop by saying, hey,

SPEAKER_64: if you steal, if you break into somebody's home, if you break into their car, if you're on the street, if you're naked running down the middle of street endangering yourself, or you're selling these super drugs, we basically took out the backstop. And now we're getting a surge in the amount of people

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SPEAKER_64: So in fact, in your research, has this compassion with great intent induced and worsened the problem?

SPEAKER_17: It's hard to say that, you know, good intent, but we do have that phrase like the road to hell is, you know, paved in good intent, right? Like, is that what's actually happened here?

SPEAKER_28: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's the removal of all consequences from people who break the law,

SPEAKER_30: if we designate them as victims, and everybody that's an addict or mentally ill is designated as a victim. And you're absolutely right. I mean, it's very hard to quit drugs in general, but you almost can't quit them if you're just being constantly enabled to use the drugs. I do meet people that recover. And yeah, they almost all have to go to jail or prison or have some threat of jail and prison hung over them. You know, it helps to shut down the open drug scenes, because then it's harder to get the drugs, you'll have to spend more time finding them, you also can make detox and rehab available. But with the basic ingredients of dope, you know, it's dopamine dysregulation. So we know how to regulate that for folks when everybody needs any exercise, they need jobs, any meaning any purpose. They can I'm fine with the opioid replacement therapies. As you mentioned, there may be other psychedelic trials that we could do. One of the big ideas that I'm promoting is that we need a statewide psychiatric and addiction care system. Right now we have a county based system. So you have 58 counties offering duplicative services. But then basically LA and San Francisco, because they're so liberal and have the open drug scenes are overwhelmed, the public health departments are overwhelmed. Plus, if you want to get somebody rehab, you don't want them to be near the open drug scene, you want them to be in the Central Valley or in the mountains. So California, you know, we do we're we are a wealthy state, we do have the potential to create a much more European style rehab program, where you have like, you know, job creation, you have job training, people can go work for Cal Fire, they could go work for Cal Psych, after they achieve recovery, that would also be a place to be to do some of the more experimental treatments. You know, there's there's psychedelics, but there's also, you know, cold baths, there's heavy exercise, there's all sorts of things that are being experimented as medical treatments. So there's no reason we can't solve this. Definitely, there's some people that are never going to recover. But I think that what we've done in what we've basically what we're doing is we're just giving up on people. And so there's a lot of pessimism, addiction, pessimism, basically consigning people that are in their 20s, who have lost control because of addiction. But we're basically consigning them to palliative care, a life of chronic drug use, and probably an early death. Yeah, I think it's inhumane. I think it's inconsistent with California's commitment to human potential, the positive psychology movement. So much of what we love about California is that this was a place where people, we moved away from all that kind of really negative Freudian, backward looking psychology to a positive future, you know, human potential psychology, optimistic psychology. Yeah. So that's, I think, what the potential is here. That's why I think that's part of the inspiration for me was, we can take this situation of chaos, and you find an alliance between people who, whose families are directly impacted by addiction and mental illness with people whose, you know, the business leaders, the tech workers, the people who are directly impacted by the homeless crisis, to come up with a better plan.

SPEAKER_17: The families themselves, you talk, you know, you spoke to families of addicts, and people suffering in the tenderloin, specifically here in San Francisco, they overwhelmingly would like to see their own family members arrested and the consequence,

SPEAKER_35: of course. And so when we look at this, you know, and it's very, it's a very hard discussion for people to have. But imagine you're at the family of the son or the daughter who's in the tenderloin,

SPEAKER_64: and you have been so broken and crushed that you literally want your own brother, sister, son, daughter, mother, father, cousin, uncle, brother, whatever, to be arrested. Because not being

SPEAKER_35: arrested, being in a jail, as horrible as that is, the family members would literally rather see their family member put in jail for some number of months or a year, in order to sober up and in order to possibly get on the recovery path, then remain on the street. Yet we have a group of individuals, I guess some cynical people believe are profiting from this, we talk about the industrial homeless complex here in San Francisco, there are hundreds of millions of dollars, I've heard people say a billion dollars, where people are, let's face it, profiting in some way. Now their intent could be good, they could believe they're doing the right thing, they could be, you know, in the short term, removing suffering. And all that can still be true. But the fact is, I think the families and what they would like to see happen with their family member trumps, what, you know, what people would frame

SPEAKER_17: as the bleeding heart, you know, or very far left, very permissive, uh, group of people running these, um, in many cases, for profit or very profitable, homeless, uh, organizations are getting am I too

SPEAKER_74: cynical? Am I framing there? Or am I? Yeah, no, totally. I mean, of course, I mean,

SPEAKER_28: if your child or your brother or your parent were on the street, if I were on the street out of

SPEAKER_30: control, because of addiction or mental illness, I would want to be arrested and mandated treatment, of course you would, because otherwise, you could die, you know, close to 100% of the women are being sexually assaulted. It's, it's really, people prey on each other on the streets, this is not a safe environment. So we have this, the issue has been the manipulation of people's minds has been around one flew over the cuckoo's nest, people don't want to be involuntarily hospitalized. But like I said, the easy way to solve that is that we're not going to be involuntarily hospitalizing people who aren't breaking laws, you can still have a choice if you'd rather if you break the law, and you'd rather go to jail, that's fine. But if you'd rather accept mandatory psychiatric or addiction care, that should be the option where we remove that option. This is, um, you know, it's interesting when you interview people in Europe, they often say, you know, we don't criminalize addiction, if you want to be a drug addict in the privacy of your own home, not breaking any laws, I think most of us are fine with that. I think it's terrible. But I think we should stigmatize it socially, but I don't think it should be a priority for law enforcement. So I think that's the new that's the social contract, so to speak, is that, you know, you can, there's a lot of we give a lot of freedom for people to use drugs in California, but you can't be breaking the law, if the drug use has gotten out of control that you're breaking laws, then you should be given the option of jail or some mandatory treatment.

David Friedberg: Yeah, it's, I think we've run an experiment that has run its course. And if you were to look at

SPEAKER_17: that experiment, the result is life on the street. And this open air drug market leads to super drugs,

SPEAKER_35: which are distinctly different than the drugs that people may have recreationally used at Berkeley themselves, or any number of places. And it's a different class of drug. And until you can have a really adult discussion that fentanyl and meth is different than mushrooms and weed, you cannot paint these things with the same brush. And then the horror of living in the tenderloin is objectively worse than going to prison or going to treatment. And in fact, if you were to rank them by people who've been to all three, they would tell you living that life on the street is horrific, going to jail is horrific, and going

SPEAKER_17: to treatment is challenging and hard. But you know, was the thing that ultimately got them productive in society? Why are you qualified for this job? What makes you qualified to to execute on this plan, which seems by all observations by people listening in the audience, or when we discuss this and with the group, you seem to have picked a very pragmatic, logical platform here that is right down the middle. Okay, great. We all agree. It's a it's a solid platform. Why can you be the person to execute on

SPEAKER_81: this? Why should we vote for you in the primary here? Yeah, it's a good question. It's a funny question.

SPEAKER_83: Because it feels like when I when I first started thinking about the job, I remember looking at it

SPEAKER_30: being like, yeah, I could do that job. That either can sound if you don't think I'm qualified that that'll sound arrogant. If I sound qualified, then maybe reassuring. Yeah, but it always felt like a job that I could do. It's these are issues. I understand. I really care about the state. You know, I've done a book now on the crime, drug and homeless crisis. I've done another book on energy and the environment. I've paid a lot of attention to things like healthcare systems, education, and my whole family are policy wonks. These are these problems all seem manageable to me. You know, I've traveled to Europe and see how they dealt with it there. I've looked at how Florida has handled its school choice, which is a system I care, I believe in that parents should have greater choice where their kids go to school. And you know, I'm on the one hand, I'm a very open person, I want to I want to build agreement among people that have differences. I'm very, I'm 50 years old, I came from the radical left, and I'm just much more moderate and open minded to different perspectives. But I'm also I think disagree. I think you say I'm a disagreeable person in other ways. There's certain things where there's certain things that I'm really firm on, like I think we need to have a statewide psychiatric addiction care system. I'm, I'm very convinced and, and make the argument that we can't solve this at the county level. But on other things like, how exactly would school choice work? Would it be public schools? Or would it also include private schools? You know, would people be allowed to be in, in trials for psychedelic drug use? If they're in rehab, I'm open to that. I'm open to housing, like, how do we get it built? Where is it built? Ultimately, that has to be a decision made by the people. So I think I've got some of the discernment here to be like, and I think I understand California is well enough. I mean, it's just this issue we were describing. There's people that are mental health advocates, and also Europeans, which they, they would really like to see people with serious mental illness, like schizophrenia, just be mandated medicine and mandated treatment. I think if all else were being equal, I agree, like my aunt has schizophrenia, she did well in a group home. But I also know Californians well enough, I think that I think that there's just enough libertarianism and squeamishness around requiring psychiatric care for people that haven't broken any other laws. And so my view has been, let's start with dealing with the folks that are on the streets, suffering from mental illness and causing problems. Similarly, with drug addiction, I don't want to criminalize addiction. Nobody should have to go to jail or prison just because they're an addict. Nobody should have to accept shelter, but you can't sleep on the

SPEAKER_89: streets. Yeah. So, you know, there's, you know, you can't break the law. You have to be able to hold

SPEAKER_16: these, these things that are seemingly inconsistent, but in your head at the same time, because it is a

SPEAKER_92: complex problem. You can't, you can't stay on the street. You can be addicted, but you can't be

SPEAKER_01: addicted on the street. You can't commit crime. If you do go to jail, it's going to be because you stabbed somebody or you robbed somebody's home, not because of the addiction, but the addiction may have caused you to do that because you needed money to service the addiction. So this is a very adult, you know, you have to be able to make a couple of logic jumps here. Yes. We're criminalizing,

SPEAKER_30: we're criminalizing behavior, not health status. Right. So you might be sick, but we're not going to criminalize that. But if your sickness leads you to break laws, then we're going to make treatment, whether that's rehab or psychiatric care, the alternative to incarceration, because that's obviously the most humane thing to do. So my latest is that when people sort of ask me what my identity is, you know, I say I'm a liberal in my compassion for the vulnerable. I'm a libertarian in my passion for freedom, and I'm a conservative in that I believe you need civilization for both. People ask me, well, how do you balance that? Well, that's it. It just kind of goes, we're not going to criminalize addiction or mental illness, but we are going to, we are going to criminalize public camping, defecating on the streets, public drug use, public drug dealing, both because you can't have a city without enforcing those laws. Right. But also enforcing those laws are what ultimately are the ways that we in America, and I think it's different in this in Europe, but that's how we in America are going to get people

SPEAKER_56: the help they need. Listen, I am super supportive of what you're doing. And in fact, I am voting for

David Friedberg: you. So thank you. People should make their own choice. But the reason I'm voting for you here in this primary is because I think Gavin Newsom has done a horrible job. I think that is, you know, if you're proven ineffective, you had your shot, you were ineffective, things got worse under your watch, and you're not focused on the right things. Therefore, I would like to see you debate just that for me, get you the vote. Now, if you do a great job debating him, and we can you can build a,

SPEAKER_35: you know, this platform, all the better. And it would be great to see some change here. I've been a lifelong I voted lifelong Democrat, but like you, I am conservative on some concept, I guess I'm conservative on some concepts like, gosh, you know, I'd like to balance the budget. I don't know if that's conservative or liberal today, since they all spend so much money. But I would like to see us be fiscally responsible. I don't know where that puts me in terms of party allegiance, I would like to see reasonable policing, but I don't want mass incarceration. Again, don't know which party I'm in. It's hard to tell. But I just love the idea of an independent candidate. And I love the idea of an independent candidate who's got, you know, who's done the research, and who takes a shot, and who's doing it because they're motivated to see the world get better. And because they love the the the city or state they're living in. So I applaud you. I don't know you that well. But I'm increasingly, you know, interested in seeing you succeed, because we do need to have more people run for office, and we intent matters. And I think your approach to it matters, which is, hey, let's just do the research, let's find a solution. And let's execute on it. And like you said, it's not rocket science. If we don't have enough homes, we're going to need to build more. And if we want to have less people addicted to drugs, especially the superdrugs, that's the way I look at it. If we want them not addicted to superdrugs, we're going to have to say superdrugs are not allowed and enforce that

SPEAKER_99: existing law. Again, not rocket science people, Michael Schellenberg is running for governor,

SPEAKER_64: you have your ballots, you can vote for him in the primary and let's see him come in second, and debate Gavin Newsom. I love it. Appreciate it. Thanks, Jason. I want to see that debate. When you do the debate prep, I want to come. I want to come hear that debate prep and I'm good with

SPEAKER_35: some one liners. It would be very cool if I could get a one liner in there that made its way into the debate. You know, I could punch up maybe some one liners for you.

SPEAKER_102: I appreciate that. Well, let's get through the primary tomorrow and hopefully that will happen.

SPEAKER_09: Everybody go vote in California, please. And we'll see how you do, Michael, and best of luck to you.

SPEAKER_83: Thanks so much, Jason. Appreciate being here. Cheers.

SPEAKER_43: This Week in Startups is supported by First Republic Bank. A seamless banking experience

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SPEAKER_01: our fund accounts for almost four years, and she loves their customer service and support. See what a difference and always on seamless banking experience can make for you. Visit FirstRepublic.com today to learn more. That's FirstRepublic.com, member FDIC, equal housing lender. Hey, Molly. Welcome. Well, hello.

SPEAKER_106: Hello. How are you? A little bonus BC school. Well, we were waiting for you. I know that you had a sitch. You had a sitch.

SPEAKER_107: And you had never get pets. People never get pets. Oh, no.

SPEAKER_106: The worst nightmare for any dog owner happens this weekend.

SPEAKER_108: Last night. No, no, it happened last night at 1030.

SPEAKER_109: Oh, great. It's great when you got to go to bed and get your one

SPEAKER_04: ended around one after multiple baths. And yeah, no, no, totally.

SPEAKER_111: So no Cinderella sleep. Uh-oh. No Cinderella sleep. Cinderella didn't get her sleep. No. I love the Cinderella comment.

SPEAKER_114: What do I need to clean up today? Just.

SPEAKER_115: It is time. This is like the light. I was talking to some moms about life. Uh, and uh,

SPEAKER_18: it's like the life of a mom. And it's like, it just never ends. Stop a single mom, even harder, right? Like, yes. Well then, yeah.

SPEAKER_116: Single mom, breadwinner, homeowner. It's like all on you.

SPEAKER_108: I am really not smart. It's what I'm thinking. Like what I'm realizing is like, I'm not smart. Like I could have made a lot more choices to make my life easier. Such as not have two dogs

SPEAKER_119: or like, couldn't I have bought like a nice like condo with no freaking wildlife. That would have

SPEAKER_120: been smart. Yeah. Um, here's what I'd say. Uh, you're, you're not smart. You're brilliant. Uh,

SPEAKER_122: but that's only from working with you. Oh, thanks partner. I needed that.

SPEAKER_123: You know, even brilliant people can make inadvisable decisions at times.

SPEAKER_107: We do not always make our lives easier. Let's just put it that way.

SPEAKER_125: Well, you know what? Smart people, I have a theory, uh, will increasingly make their

David Friedberg: lives more complex because they're good at solving problems. So it's like, well, two dogs, what could be the worst thing that could happen? And it's like, I don't know, for a big week,

SPEAKER_09: a skunk attacks your dog and you've gotta give them 17 baths and they still smell terrible. And you're exhausted. But anyway, you're here. That's all that matters. I'm here. Uh, we've got a lot of news to go through. So we got this, we got this. Hey, good game yesterday,

SPEAKER_135: huh? Warriors bounced back quite nicely. Right? Maybe I'm the, the curse here. Oh, no, no. It was Saks. Saks in the front row. Oh yeah. That'll do it with that dour,

SPEAKER_136: that dour energy. Well, absolutely. That Asperger's energy just kills the game.

SPEAKER_138: Just looking at him like. He's so sad. And then Saks, they removed Saks from the front row

SPEAKER_139: and they put J Cal in the front row. And what happens? Boom. Boom. We crushed them.

SPEAKER_144: We destroyed it. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Everybody showed up. Pool party. Clay was back. Draymond. Draymond mixing it up. Yeah. Include this in the show, by the way, this will be a little warm up for the show. Uncalled for tea.

SPEAKER_149: Um, uncalled for tea, but, uh, it was, it was great. I literally get into my front row seat that, uh,

SPEAKER_18: a friend of mine got me, uh, which was quite nice. Uh, thank you to my friend. Um, I didn't ask for permission to say online on the air, so I would say, um, and I sit down and whose seats am I next to?

SPEAKER_153: Cheryl Sandberg. I saw your picture. I was like, shut the front door with this.

SPEAKER_156: I was like, Cheryl's like, take out. This freaking guy. Cheryl and I are drinking. We're cheering. You're like, what are we working on now?

SPEAKER_158: Well, I was like, don't get another job. I told her, I was like, you know, you're going to get a lot of job offers. Take a year off because there's not that many years left and you know, you've worked really hard. Um, and I, I wouldn't talk about our conversation,

SPEAKER_149: but it's quite fun because we've got a great history together. Um, we had a real long talk for three hours. It was fun. That's so great. So you were, you were like under the basket.

SPEAKER_135: I was, yeah. Tell me, tell me about this placement compared to side, you know, bench under the basket.

SPEAKER_164: It's the seats we were in the second row center court are better in that you can see the action

SPEAKER_165: on both sides of court. The seats at the baseline are better because you can see the are better than the half court. If you for half the game, because you're closer to the action, you see this action around the basket. So I mean, which is like, literally, if I took three steps, I would be under the basket, which means like all that action under the basket is just happening. Then I'm was, you

SPEAKER_35: know, I guess they call that kitty corner to, uh, you know, the, the bench and Draymond was getting into it with Williams. And I started getting into with Williams and then Draymond and I were laughing

SPEAKER_64: at Williams. And I was telling Williams, you have no rings. He's got all the rings. And then Draymond said to me, that guy's a fan. He's a fan. I was like, you want an autograph? I'll get you an autograph from Draymond. So Draymond and I are standing up with the only two guys standing up yelling at the

SPEAKER_172: Celtics. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to, he's not going to get thrown out of the game. I'm going to get thrown into games. I'm going to sit down, but the whole audience starts getting into it and it was a whole Meshuggah craziness. Uh, but it was a good time. And congratulations to

SPEAKER_177: my pal Draymond, who just absolutely was, you know, he's just that X factor in the game.

SPEAKER_179: When he does that, when he just shows up just a little bit different, it's everything. It's the

SPEAKER_04: complete, it's a complete change in approach. And you could see the, like, fired upness of the rest of the team. Oh, yes. Like, you could really see it. I mean, just to see Jordan Poole show up like that in the third and fourth quarter was just a delight.

SPEAKER_184: I love those young kids court shot. Yeah. It's like, it's like, whoa, I mean,

SPEAKER_122: the roof almost came off the building. So I bet it was absolutely awesome. Great. Go dubs. And

David Friedberg: I'm sticking with my warriors in six. Yeah. I think the Celtics are an incredible team.

SPEAKER_139: Um, other people are thinking this is going to be what they call a gentleman's sweep. Um, which is you, the other team gets to win one game and they save face a little bit. Um, I'm still going Celtics in six. I think this is a very serious. Warriors in six.

David Friedberg: Warriors in six. Uh, Celtics win two games. Um, Celtics are no joke. Um, and I got to hang out with Bill Simmons finally. So I was in the, you know, the VIP area and, uh, I saw Bill Simmons and

SPEAKER_18: we had a nice podcasting talk and, uh, I saw, uh, Chad Hurley, um, professional s*** poster on Twitter, former founder of, or still co-founder of YouTube. So we had a nice conversation. He wants to come

SPEAKER_02: on the pod. It's for Brian from Airbnb. So again, a who's who of, uh, Silicon Valley and celebrities and a win, which is all that matters really. That's all that matters. How many of those

SPEAKER_04: Silicon Valley guys? Cause I saw this, I saw, I think a Twitter thread to the effect that like, you know, now going to game and chase is just so it's like a bunch of Silicon Valley guys who

SPEAKER_142: don't know anything about basketball. Not true. Um, I don't know that that's entirely true.

SPEAKER_177: No, I think there are some people who, you know, are just showing up because it's the finals. No, that's not a dick to sex. Does he not like basketball? No, he had courtside seats to the warriors for a couple of seasons, but he didn't, he rarely went

SPEAKER_18: to Oakland cause it was a, you know, it's a challenge to get out to Oakland. As you know, if you're in the city or you're in the peninsula, it was like a two hour mission.

SPEAKER_177: Uh, yeah, no, he's not like the most sophisticated basketball fan. Um, but you know, other people

SPEAKER_00: are there every game, you know, and then they are super into it. Um, and it's a great culture. I have to say out here because I think a lot of the culture of the warriors team and how well they play together, how well they're coached, how well the team is managed. Um, and the longevity of this, you know, uh, this trio play staff trauma is something you don't see in the NBA all that much now. So that is super attractive. And I think a lot of folks who are in Silicon Valley think about building teams and to have the most well-constructed disciplined team to be our team, you know, um, I think it resonates with people. Um, and so I think it's like a mutual respect. Uh, you have Raymond, Steph and clay who are just world-class. You have Steve Kerr who's world-class and then this other cast of characters, uh, that have been, you know, the supporting cast from Bogut

SPEAKER_02: to David Lee, uh, Andre Iguodala, Kevin Durant. I mean, to have Iguodala come back,

SPEAKER_203: I think is such a big, you know, like such a great boat of confidence. Yeah, love it. Yeah, it's all

SPEAKER_25: great. So, uh, but a lot of news has been happening. We should probably fly to Boston. All right,

SPEAKER_99: let's talk about time. I know we probably should fly to Boston. Yeah, we just got to keep working. We got to keep working. I got a lot of deal memos. I got to get out this one for the syndicate. I'm

SPEAKER_04: behind on my deal memos. You know where you can get a lot of work done? Turns out is a plane

SPEAKER_207: cross-country flight. I'm just saying, look at my focus time. You've got full VC now. Somebody tweeted

SPEAKER_212: like just enabling. Oh my God. Somebody tweeted, uh, this great tweet there. It might have been

SPEAKER_205: VC Braggs on Twitter and they were like, VCs be like, cut your staff, do layoffs, belt tightening, lower valuations. And meanwhile, sitting courtside or coming from Grand Prix of Miami to stick

SPEAKER_218: court side for the warriors. And I was just responded with who me. They were like, no comment.

SPEAKER_99: It was the who me, uh, who, um, the who me with, um, from Carmelo Anthony, when they asked him if

SPEAKER_64: he would ever consider playing on the bench and he was on the thing and he said, who me? Me? It was a classic, but listen, let's get into the news. There's a lot of news and it looks like some

SPEAKER_99: news broke and we can do a live reaction here. Apple had its, uh, is right now, uh, as we speak,

SPEAKER_222: as we're talking, as we're talking, the worldwide developer conference is going on and it's just

SPEAKER_99: being teed up right now. Uh, and so maybe we could, uh, Molly, you could set us up here about what's going on over there. And then we could watch a video and live react to it. Cause we don't know

SPEAKER_64: this is notes that came in while we were on air. So this is live reaction, like a, like a CNN kind

SPEAKER_04: of report. I've just really been waiting for there to be a big breaking news alert. That's like, Apple announces it hears you about the Bluetooth thing and is fixing it so far. I have not gotten that breaking news alert. Had it been a notification while I was in the car taking my kid to work, uh, I wouldn't have received it because Bluetooth doesn't work in my car anymore. Bluetooth gate continues. Bluetooth gate goes on. However, uh, Apple has announced it, but enough about me. Uh, Apple has announced a bunch of new iOS 16 features. Uh, you can now customize the theme colors and layout of your lock screen. Sometimes I get to the point where I'm like describing these Apple events and I'm like, we're still doing this. We really are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_203: We're really talking about customized lock screen. Sure. Widgets. Okay. Yeah. Um, some slightly

SPEAKER_04: cooler things you can, the kids these days all use iMessage as their social network. It is the group chat of choice and Apple seems to have realized that which is cool. They're now bringing a share play API to iMessages, which means you can actually watch videos live together, which is cool. Oh,

SPEAKER_108: wow. Yeah. Like a watch party. Uh, like a watch party. And you know, I mean, they're always sharing like a YouTube video and you got to watch it and then tell people what you thought or like hit play

SPEAKER_04: at the same time. I think that's actually like as a great feature because people have been saying for years that iMessage could be a social network. I mean, it really could be like a privacy first, you know, non public social network and that's how people use it with group chat. So this is actually

SPEAKER_239: I think you don't want to be the green. You don't want to be the green is the you don't want to be

SPEAKER_00: the green bubble in the group. Oh, man. I really know for the green bubbles. I told my my teams no more X day on the green bubbles. I am not uh paying for I'm not reimbursing green bubbles. It's like if you're going to be in the VC land, you got to have an iPhone. I mean, and I know they're never

SPEAKER_135: going to but just know they will please hurry up and like they need to release iMessage as

SPEAKER_04: it's not going to happen and it's never going to happen. This is why would it because it sells

SPEAKER_177: iPhones. It sells iPhones like I tried to move to Android and I was I was parallel. I was doing a

SPEAKER_00: parallel thing and I was like, Okay, yeah, I'm going to get off this iOS and I'm going to go full Google stack and I tried and I was using Chrome a whole bunch and it was iMessage that kept me so they know that's what's keeping me absolutely and I looked into all these third party tools of like how to get iMessage on your windows desktop and like they're like, well, you can set up an iMac and then do like a remote thing and pop it up in a window and I'm like, so I buy a second take an old

SPEAKER_246: second computer and I'm you know, I'm using messages terminal as a terminal that I'm opening up in a

SPEAKER_00: second window like, you know, doing a remote thing and I was like, Oh God, this is so complex can Apple

SPEAKER_09: please just let the world use this and they would take over but the profits from the iPhone are worth

SPEAKER_247: more. So that's the sun. Here's a 72 minute clip. Yeah, we'll talk to you on the other side.

SPEAKER_250: And now we're adding three of the most highly requested features to messages. First, have you ever sent a message only to immediately realize you didn't quite say what you

SPEAKER_253: intended? Well, no worries, because now you can edit any message you just sent. So embarrassing

SPEAKER_250: typos can be a thing of the past. Second, have you ever wished you'd never sent that message at all? Well, good news. Now you have undo send. So you can immediately recall a recent misfire.

SPEAKER_260: Thank you. And finally, you can mark any thread is unread. A perfect tool if you don't have time to respond in the moment and want to be sure to come back to a message later. Oh, wow. Unread.

SPEAKER_268: We just got punked by our own producers. We got punked by our own producers. I was like,

SPEAKER_273: wait a minute. That was the actual Apple. I know like that would be hilarious if they did that, but they did that was us. They didn't. Bravo producer Nick, but also accurate because I mean, right. This is the kind of like, I'm so hyped

SPEAKER_276: right now. Usability, awesome sauce. Okay, hold on. Three things we just saw. Number one,

SPEAKER_278: you can edit a message for a typo auto correct. You can take ducking and make it the right word,

SPEAKER_205: the right word. Thank you for saving me. Number two, you could take that back. If you said something, I'm not saying I've said something to a spouse or a friend that I immediately after hitting the send button was like, oops, or just wrong thread, like wrong thread happens all the time. Like

SPEAKER_04: the simplest version is just wrong thread. You're like, ah, crap, that was not for you. That was for my husband. Or, you know, I get that from like my girlfriend, Christine all the time. And it's always like, what are we having for dinner? She's like, dang it. I'm like, because our names start

SPEAKER_99: with them, both of them. So now and then also, you have mark as unread the simple email feature, which allows you instead of saying remind me of this. It's like, okay, I'm going to keep it unread.

SPEAKER_64: So I know to reply to it. Of those three, take a moment here, Molly, which one is the most awesome for you. What's awesome for you. So this has a lot to do with you, Molly and your personality.

SPEAKER_283: What do you if you could only have one? Which one would you? I mean, it's so terrible.

SPEAKER_285: Because I feel like you already know what a like a control freak. I'm like, I can't live with a typo.

SPEAKER_99: I can't. It's the typo. It's 100%. Yes. I don't send messages. I want to recall very often. No. Um, sometimes I do forget things. The typo is very close to the mark is unread though,

SPEAKER_179: because the worst thing in the world for any interaction is when someone sees that you've

SPEAKER_04: read their message, but you haven't answered. Yes. So if you can mark it as unread and it doesn't show up as read to them, then they're like, oh, she hasn't seen it yet. It's okay. She's not ignoring me as opposed to it shows up as read and she knows. And, and yes, by the way, chat. Um, yeah, of course, all this stuff came from WhatsApp. Yeah, that's what everybody does now.

SPEAKER_296: Well, I mean, it's specifically Apple. They're like, go ahead, specifically Apple. They're always like, make whatever features you want. Mine now two years later, three years later,

SPEAKER_04: we'll add it, you know, when we're, yeah, we're just like, we dunk on Zuckerberg a lot for stealing everybody's stuff, but let's be real. Apple pioneered this model. Well, Apple does it.

SPEAKER_02: They bring you this thing and they're like delay. And I think their time delay is intentional, Molly. I, this is my view. Yeah. They want to let their app developers exploit all these new features,

SPEAKER_00: test them. That's their R and D department. And then when those, but you don't want to piss them

SPEAKER_99: off. So what Zuck does is, oh, you came out with spaces. Oh, you came out with stories. Oh, you came out with ephemeral messages, lenses. I am in a race to get that onto our platform in a shorter period of time because he doesn't have an app store. So why does he care if he upsets Evan Spiegel, our friend from the Warriors game? Oh, what does he care? He doesn't care. Yeah, but Apple does have an issue. So if they were to steal these features, the people in the app store would be like, that's not fair. And then you would have this vibe like Amazon started getting, hey, you're studying our data, you know, we're getting downloaded a lot. And then you made an

SPEAKER_02: Amazon basics. So Apple is brilliant. These features, as somebody pointed out, have been out for what, five years in different messaging platforms. Totally. Three to five. So they had

SPEAKER_301: plenty of head start. It's literally less such a good start exploited. We're not going anywhere. We own

SPEAKER_04: good observation that they basically are like, we'll give you this head start. We'll make sure that our own users are like clamoring for this so that by the time they get it, they're just like, Apple is our God line up for more. And then they could say, look, in the interest of fairness,

SPEAKER_303: you had five years to build an audience and you just didn't. Well, I mean, based on the supercut are

SPEAKER_248: very genius producers who are being very well managed, I will say by management's doing a very

SPEAKER_99: good job here. I I think that this is a direct result of depth management by me. But they have more time allocated to do creative things. And that was a very creative thing to do. So shout out to

SPEAKER_307: Nick, who was adorable. I love it here. What's great about what Nick just did with this video

SPEAKER_99: is that video just perfectly encapsulates this theory I have, which is they wait three, four or five years. And then people forget about the feature. And then when you get it, you're like,

SPEAKER_310: oh my God, it's a new feature again. It's amazing. Oh my God. It's amazing. You can edit it. It's like,

SPEAKER_203: but you can do that. It's really like being, it's like being in a cult where they come along and they're like, now you can have hamburgers. And you're like, I was about to say it's a cheeseburger.

SPEAKER_317: They're like, and now is our new innovation. It's six ounces of ground beef between

SPEAKER_320: two pieces of bread with cheese. We think you're going to love it.

SPEAKER_322: The cheeseburger and be like, oh my God, a cheeseburger. In classic apple style, they would start with a hamburger and then two years later they'd add cheese and you'd be like, oh my God. They

SPEAKER_205: charge you extra for the cheese cheeseburger. You can pay $199 for the cheeseburger stand.

SPEAKER_177: If you want to spend another $99, we'll put it in a box.

SPEAKER_137: Um, you get, we get them. Um, okay. So what else? So that's the iMessages stuff. There's the lock screen thing, which like, yay, whatever. Customize your phone. Um, people love that stuff.

SPEAKER_04: Apple also announced this is big coming for, uh, the buy now pay later space, which has had some

SPEAKER_135: issues later, uh, some issues. Apple announced Apple pay later.

SPEAKER_108: APL. APL. They're putting out an APL. They're putting out an APL so that you can use your, which

SPEAKER_04: is, which is interesting. Cause as we've discussed, like that's how a lot of people are using their apple card and by a lot of people, I mean like me, like when I buy any apple products, I am expectively using apple pay later, but now they're rolling it out for, I guess, buying other items with apple pay too. You can sort of buy now pay later with it. All right. There's no video for it. It's,

David Friedberg: it's not explained. Uh, but, uh, obviously it's very basic. I don't, we don't know yet if the,

SPEAKER_35: we know they were doing this for apple products, but how this integrates into other commerce experiences, I guess is an unknown, but I guess if somebody signs up for this and you use apple pay, and I'm increasingly using apple play because of its simplicity. And I'll, I'll tell you something, apple pay on your watch is next level. So I was using a, um, I had a very frustrating moment. I was indignant. In fact, I was using me, I parked by the ferry building and had to use a parking meter.

SPEAKER_205: And it said you could NFC this, you use your watch and it didn't work. And I was outraged because when I went to get my blue bottle coffee, I was able to beep, beep, ding, pay for it. Yeah. And then,

SPEAKER_00: you know, I went to, I was doing another experience, uh, recently, I'm trying to remember what it was, but it was another food experience where I was ordering from a kiosk. It was in the airport and

SPEAKER_99: I paid with my apple watch and it's so delightful to not take out your phone or your wallet and just pretty awesome watch. It's great. Now, what if I could say I buy this blue bottle coffee and listen,

SPEAKER_02: it's not cheap. Molly is like six bucks. I keep paying later. Eight now with inflation.

SPEAKER_99: If I could do that $6, I could pay later. I could do four easy payments of $1.50 over the next four

SPEAKER_02: months with no interest. No interest. Yeah. Oh my Lord. I would only be paying $1.50 for that coffee.

SPEAKER_04: And they show the, I just dropped this in the, in the chat. If you can, if we can pull it up, because there's a good screenshot of how it would look. So you would have this option pay in full, or you just do a little slider pay later. And then it's like, Oh, okay. 46, 27, every two weeks, four payments. Uh, and it shows you in two weeks and four weeks and six weeks, how much it is, no interest, total costs. I mean, to be honest, it's like way more transparent than the buy now, pay later options. Now, what I do think is interesting. And a thing that drives me absolutely insane about, uh, Apple pay is that it looks like

SPEAKER_108: you have to use your card, your Apple card. Huh? I don't know if that's true. I mean,

SPEAKER_115: I think it would do Apple pay. Cause I fill up like five. Well, I shouldn't say that somebody's

SPEAKER_177: still my phone, but I put five grand on my Apple pay, like at the start of the year, right? So you could do it with whatever process. I want to do that. And have the card set up to auto

SPEAKER_245: pay. So I will use my card from time to time, but I'm just always using Apple pay for everything.

SPEAKER_108: And it's just so delightful. So it says Apple pay later is available everywhere. Apple pay is accepted online or in app using the mastercard network that's from Apple. So,

SPEAKER_344: Oh, she could do it on anything. So that would mean any card that you've loaded into Apple pay.

Jason Calacanis: That's great. Cause if it was just tied to the car, cause one thing that drives me crazy about Apple pay is that even though I have set my chase card as my default, because those are the best

SPEAKER_04: points in the business, it always wants, it always defaults to using the Apple card to pay first. And I'm always like, no, but this, but if, if you've just set up Apple pay with either cash or any card or a debit card or whatever, it looks like you'll be able to use them.

SPEAKER_278: Well, here's what's interesting. They've just, but you have to apply.

SPEAKER_177: Hold on a second. I think I underestimated what's happening here. Cause my first question was,

SPEAKER_02: I guess that they're going to have to make a deal with each merchant or something. And I'm reading here from the release, Apple pay later is available and everywhere. Apple pay is accepted online or in app using the mastercard network. Okay. Those are the qualifiers.

SPEAKER_99: So if they use apple pay and it's mastercard, because I guess they, you know, the, the fees matter here, uh, you can do this, which means, I mean, everybody supports apple pay now. It's like becoming a thing. So this means that they're going to have a footprint that's much bigger than a firm

SPEAKER_02: or any of the other people doing this. In other words, it's being done, not on a merchant by merchant basis. It's being done on like a platform basis. This is really disruptive. I mean, what is

SPEAKER_99: this going to do to a firm stock? Do we have cause who are the, uh, is there any, are there any other publicly traded? Our firm has to be getting walloped right now. I think it already is. Let me look,

SPEAKER_190: I'm going to just pull it up real quick. Cause yeah, no, this is a, this is actually a huge deal.

SPEAKER_248: Down 3%, 2.87. So it's actually, I actually heard that, uh, that, uh, Max, Max Levchin,

SPEAKER_99: um, was on CNBC today. So I mentioned that was a preemptive, um, in the past five days,

SPEAKER_248: they're down 20%. So it's, it's obviously been a rough ride for them. Um, and I don't even know since the peak, but that's one of those stocks that got mega wallop. They were at $168 November 4th, they're now at $24. And so they are down 85% from the peak peak trow 91%.

SPEAKER_04: Oh my Lord. And now Apple just, now Apple just came and said like, peace out. Now, as we recently looked up, Apple has about a 51% market share in the United States. So it's not like everybody in

SPEAKER_108: America is all of a sudden going to be using this. You have to have Apple pay set up and have your stuff

SPEAKER_360: in there. Just the most well-heeled customers. Just the people who buy the most stuff.

SPEAKER_108: I know. I mean, this is like, you know, I think there's like, generally after my years as a business

SPEAKER_04: journalist, I have realized that there is generally an underestimation of the importance of things that are related to financial stuff. Like overall, right. I was talking about this this weekend at a conference with, uh, in relation to climate, like guys, it feels like there's not a lot happening in politics, but there's a ton happening in money and that's actually more important. This is that like, that's great that you can customize your lock screen or whatever, but Apple just

SPEAKER_322: started dominating payments. Dominating. And here's the thing, they made it so easy. So you look at

SPEAKER_177: crypto and crypto is like, we're better payment system. I don't know. I open up my phone every day

SPEAKER_99: and the user interface is so great on this. And now I can spread my payments out over six weeks. Not that I need to, but why wouldn't I to your point? There's no interest. There's no interest. And so time is money. Uh, like this is, I mean, listen, I'm not the customer here, but it, I was the customer probably 15 years ago and 15 years ago, this would have been meaningful to me when I was, well, maybe 20, when I was living more on a, you know, month to month, quarter to quarter basis. This is significant. What's really interesting about this, Molly is if you think about Apple's competitive advantages, they have all the money with a $200

SPEAKER_301: billion plus hedge fund. They don't need to go to anybody to secure a facility. Yep.

SPEAKER_99: So a firm or any other buy now, pay later company, they need to set up money and pay interest on it in some way. And then there's a margin here. Apple could just make this a feature. So for them to float your money for six weeks costs nothing. Yep. And for you to buy a phone every two years and make them $600 in profit and to use the app store and make them probably another 600 in profit with that.

SPEAKER_196: Totally. And if you have Apple card and you end up, and also they have, and I hate to say this,

SPEAKER_04: right? Apple is they're big on privacy, but this also gives them a lot of insight into data, shopping data, like a lot, a lot. If you have the Apple card, they're taking a transaction fee every time that you use that Apple card to do these purchases. I mean, this is just like if this is actually how Apple discovers a new solar system, if you will, because this is a huge deal,

SPEAKER_303: but also it still sells iPhones because you can only do this on Apple devices. It's genius.

SPEAKER_15: It's so genius. Um, so they also have an API, which is interesting for the lock screen. So what this

SPEAKER_00: means is, uh, anybody can build a lock screen experience. In other words, you have the app

SPEAKER_99: store, you make an app there, uh, you know, the Peloton app, let's say, uh, or Spotify, better example. Then you got the Spotify watch app, right? It's extension of that. And then you have the Spotify widget, you know, that you can float on your, you know, desktop or your iPad desktop or your

SPEAKER_248: phone or, uh, or when you swipe left, there's that little area that can, it's not the control center, but that's the other area for like notifications. What this means is there's another app extension,

SPEAKER_35: essentially. So what could you do with the phone is locked? You pick it up and you see something.

SPEAKER_09: So let's watch this 56 second clip where, uh, Craig, uh, from Apple explains.

SPEAKER_376: Sometimes notifications can cover up your personal photo. So we've rethought how they appear.

SPEAKER_250: Notifications now roll in from the bottom of the lock screen as you receive them, and you can choose to hide them throughout the day. Now, sometimes you get a bunch of notifications from an app, like when you're following the score of a basketball game. Well, now there's a better way to keep tabs with something called live activities. Live activities make it easier to stay on top of things that are happening in real time, right from your lock screen. And for developers starting in an update to iOS 16 later this year, they can use the live activities API to create these compact and glanceable experiences. This will make it really easy to follow that NBA game, track the progress of an Uber ride, see how you're doing on your workout and more all while letting the other elements on the lock screen

SPEAKER_387: shine. All right. Another winner. Small vein that's existed on Android for a long time.

SPEAKER_123: Like a long time. Like a long time. Yeah. But what an amazing cheeseburger. I'd like to try it.

SPEAKER_196: I've never had a cheeseburger. I would love to try that cheeseburger. I know Android users have this, but do you think if I give you like $99, I could also have ketchup? I mean, awesome. Absolutely. Like, honestly, slide up. So this again, what color ketchup would you like?

SPEAKER_391: It comes in seven colors. But that is freaking awesome to not have. There's so much stuff that

SPEAKER_285: I do on my phone all the time that I don't want to have to unlock it to monitor like a time, like a song playing. I mean, they have those kind of like little widgets, but they don't totally work.

SPEAKER_108: The Uber thing is awesome. The Uber one is the best one. The Uber one is the best one.

SPEAKER_301: I mean, or DoorDash or Instacart to see them approaching. Or Domino's has their little status bar.

SPEAKER_108: You can have a little Amazon Where's My Stuff, except Amazon won't do it because they're in a big, huge fight or whatever, whatever. Yeah, whatever Amazon. This is brilliant. And you know,

SPEAKER_00: what's really interesting that we're starting to see here is Apple protecting our privacy. I mean, if you want to get really cynical about this, I did a tweet about it. Oh, I do somebody, somebody

David Friedberg: named Seth Miller said the audacity after decimating the entire economy. And I don't know who Seth

SPEAKER_396: Mills 21 is. But let's see if I can find his title. CEO of rap chat app. Okay. So he's he's

SPEAKER_108: So one of the many. Yeah, like probably a small companies that was, you know, injured

David Friedberg: by. Yeah. So here, look at this person. We can pull up the screenshot. I guess he got an upsell.

SPEAKER_00: Um, when he was in maybe the news product and it says personalized ads. So if you click on the his tweet and you click on the screenshot, let's zoom in on that and I'll just read you what it says. Personal ads in Apple apps, such as the app store and Apple news, help you discover apps, products and services that are relevant to you. We protect your privacy by using device generated

SPEAKER_248: identifiers and not linking advertising information to your Apple ID turning on personalized ads increases the relevance of ads shown turning on personalized increases the relevance of ads shown by letting us use data like account information app and content purchases and where available the types of news stories you read Apple does not track you or share your personal information with

SPEAKER_205: any third party. So anyway, Apple 12 years after Facebook perfected personalized ads has launched

SPEAKER_177: personalized ads. But Apple can do personalized ads because they're storing your data on your phone, I would think and not sharing it with folks. Um, and they're using it in their app store and news

SPEAKER_99: apps to help you discover apps and products and services relevant to you. So they did it differently.

SPEAKER_04: So it's okay. But is it though, we do not by the way, they do not say that they are storing this on

SPEAKER_333: device. And I am certain that they're not there's no way they could be storing my permission on tonight

SPEAKER_404: device. Otherwise, they couldn't offer you personalized anything like they need to be able to.

SPEAKER_108: Well, you're saying like, because of speed? No, I'm saying they need to aggregate data around you.

SPEAKER_165: Otherwise, they can't target you. Well, here's what they could. They could have a hundred psychographic categories, right? Like NBA lover, car lover, etc. And they get let's say they just had 100 on your phone, you, you know, so you like cash, you play casual games, or you play, you know, strategy games, whatever game category or and whatever, they keep that on your phone. And it's going to you open up your news app, or you open up your app store. And it says, Hey, listen, this phone likes casual games and strategy games, cars, and the NBA, and the ads, people

SPEAKER_00: who are buying ads can say can pick from those psychographic categories, but they can't target you, which, you know, unlike say, Facebook, so I guess they could do it technically, they wouldn't be able to do it in real time, like in a search, right, or in your feed in real time,

SPEAKER_248: because that would take it being on the server, I think, and be be faster. But who knows? We'll try to find out. Yeah, we'll try to find out. I mean, it's just like crazy hypocritical.

SPEAKER_409: It's dirty as hell. It's dirty as hell. And it was always coming. I mean, we've been saying this

SPEAKER_04: for we've been saying, I think we've probably been saying this on some level, at least I have for half a decade or longer, which was like, Apple has a ton of data around you about you. It is only a

SPEAKER_203: matter of time before they want to monetize that data. Full stop. Yeah, but and this is that

SPEAKER_04: it is that and it's saying we're only going to do this, though, in our walled garden, it'll only be the data, which is just like, well, you know, we're not going to follow you across the

SPEAKER_142: web the way that Facebook did. Here's the big difference, Molly, you have to give them this,

SPEAKER_35: they're asking you to opt into it with a very understandable message, right? So what percentage

SPEAKER_04: of which they didn't do at first, by default, when iOS 15 came out, you have it was not

SPEAKER_208: it was they weren't doing personal and they changed it. No, they changed it. They specifically got in a lot of trouble and then changed it. So if Facebook did this and Facebook

SPEAKER_99: said, Hey, we want to personalize ads to you. Is that okay? I would feel a lot better about

SPEAKER_00: Facebook. I'll be honest. But you know, burying this stuff in the interfaces. This is where I

SPEAKER_02: think defaults matter. So I will give I'll give Apple like a B on this, you might give them a C or D. But I think it's like a B for me. I mean, I'll give them a B on interface, but and clarity,

SPEAKER_04: and I'm going to give them a C or D on opting into targeted ads at all on on like targeted advertising only ends badly. And shouldn't be necessary. Like that's, I don't want that. I just I can opt out.

Jason Calacanis: But the fact that I can opt out, but I like know it exists now makes me suspicious in a way that I wasn't before it was like, I think that was Apple brand. It feels off brand. Yes, I think that's a

SPEAKER_99: really good insight. The other important insight I want to share with everybody is there's a lot of people commenting on Domino's and the fact that I know the Domino's interface for the personalized screen. Okay, let me defend myself. Domino's is awesome. Domino's regular pizza is like a trashy delight. But it's trashy. I agree. I would never order like I'll go to like a really good brick oven place. I'll get right. But I have to say I know you're going with this then crust pepperoni is not pizza. It's not pizza. Nick producer Nick is absolutely in line with me on this.

SPEAKER_301: It's like having some other thing. It's like a little cracker. It's like a cracker with cheese and pepperoni on it is the perfect most delightful thing you can order

SPEAKER_99: for your daughters when watching Obi-Wan or the Mandalorian and you've got to I'm not saying like, you know, listen, I try to be the best that I can. But sometimes you're caught in the crossfire and you

SPEAKER_205: got kids yelling and screaming at you. And nobody's happy. Mom's not home. I'm a solo dolo. I am just like, one hand I got the Domino's app. The other hand I got Disney Plus and I'm like, I got to get these three girls, you know, under control. I'm like, oh, look, Obi-Wan and Mandalorian. Boom. Boom. Oh, look, I ordered Domino's and all of a sudden the world's right. I got that Domino's

SPEAKER_35: thin crust coming. They love the thin crust. They do like their chicken too now. They have little chicken

SPEAKER_434: nuggets there. Also, absolute 100% shout out to Domino's for building their own delivery infrastructure.

SPEAKER_438: Yes. And their stock has gone 10x over the last 10 years. Listen, Domino's is why. That's nice of you to make it

SPEAKER_02: a business story, but also it's delicious. I have been telling, I have been telling

SPEAKER_444: Uber publicly for a long time, buy Domino's. Yes. Buy Domino's. Isn't Domino's, there is,

SPEAKER_285: this is a real stock story. Like I think Domino's is like the stock that's up the most over the last

SPEAKER_447: decade. 10x over the last 10 years. It's unbelievable. But isn't it more than almost any

SPEAKER_04: other consumer stock, if not any, like there was something, there was some crazy stat that was like, if you look at the stock that's gained the most in the last 10 years, you'll never guess, you know, it was like one of those, like, you'll never guess which stock it is. And it's fricking Domino's.

SPEAKER_191: I mean, pull up the five year chart for Domino's. It's right. Listen, I am a complete trash.

SPEAKER_108: It's only 13 billion. And Domino's is awesome. Although I have a question about Domino's.

SPEAKER_04: I recently had to rank cheap pizza with my son and I was like, you know, it's a tough one for me because Domino's is close to the bottom. Once you factor in like mountain mics and round table, and you know what is actually weirdly the best cheap pizza in the world? Chuck E. Cheese.

SPEAKER_455: Oh, Chuck E. Cheese isn't bad. Yeah. That pizza is delicious.

SPEAKER_165: I was like, this is going to be the worst pizza I've ever had. And I was like, I could have a slice. I thought that's no, it's good. We've driven there on purpose for it. With the cheese,

SPEAKER_457: the stuffed crust with the cheese in there. Oh yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_434: I will give one quick Domino's take. Their regular cheese pizza is repulsive, I think.

SPEAKER_464: That's true. Horrible. That's accurate. That's accurate. Thin crust is great. Thin crust is transcendent.

SPEAKER_244: It's called the Domino's Cracker. It's a Domino's Cracker. A Domino's Cracker pizza is great. It's a little appetizer. It's great as an appetizer. We're having this tonight, a palate cleanser.

SPEAKER_205: I'm getting this tonight. Well, here's the thing. But so very, we have two very important points here about Domino's.

SPEAKER_00: We do. Number one, thin crust pizza. Number two, they built their own app and their own delivery infrastructure. It is so freaking fast. It's disturbing. Like they get there fast.

SPEAKER_99: Now the app's not perfect, but it is a great user experience. And um, I want to know Domino's. Are they franchises each store? Yeah. And independently operated? Or is it a, are you just an employee of that? Because it does feel like they have, I think the benefit of franchising Molly is, and Nick, producer Nick's on the line, is that the franchise E has a higher motivation than just a GM. Like if you had a general manager of the

SPEAKER_248: store. So they, yeah, yeah. So Domino's prides itself in branding excellent around its team members and franchises. Much of Domino's has come from its franchise business model, which is an internally based franchise system. I don't know what an internally based franchise system is,

SPEAKER_99: but whatever it is, it works because God bless them. Like they care. They are racing to get you

SPEAKER_438: your pizza and they do it right. And you, you can't, I mean, at least the Domino's that I've driven by, I don't know, maybe like some of them in the Midwest or the South are different, but you can pick up like you can't even go inside them. They're just delivering.

SPEAKER_478: Most are cloud kitchens and some of them now have pickup. So if you want to save,

SPEAKER_00: like they give you two bucks off if you pick up yourself. So they do it. All right,

SPEAKER_122: here we go. NerdWallet 2020 initial franchise franchising fee. The Domino's initial franchise fee is 10,000 for building a new store or franchise or franchising a closer. What? No, no way. I'm going to order 10 today. What are you talking about? I've spent 10,000 a year on this

SPEAKER_481: stuff. Uh, you're going to, you're going to order a store. Well, I mean, I think if you want to open one of these, it's going to become a Domino's colonizer. I would totally colonize Domino's.

SPEAKER_99: Absolutely. I would like to point out long overdue for, to have like a feta cheese pizza.

SPEAKER_487: Uh, the Greeks are coming. And reasons why I love my life in Oakland.

SPEAKER_490: Wow. Listen, we should have a lamb. Why don't you talk about us?

Jason Calacanis: Just lamb lovers, lamb lovers pizza. Let's go get a pizza place in a wine shop and just reclaim the brand on behalf of the Greeks. I went to the Oakland Greek festival and I always try the Greek wine and I'm

SPEAKER_494: always like, yeah, no, no, no. Uh, okay. And I can, I get Domino's in my freaking house,

SPEAKER_117: by the way, for the second house in a row in Oakland, get it together, Oakland. Um, okay. On

SPEAKER_99: the low side, you can expect to invest around 145 on the high end total can climb about 500,000 initial investment. Franchising free a 10,000 for building a new store. Uh, net worth requirement is 250,000 check cash liquidity requirement 75,000 check. I'm qualified. I could open up 10 of these tomorrow, but I think you only get a certain area. So it's probably they've all been taken.

SPEAKER_142: You get a corner. Well, you could open one that delivers to my house because again,

Jason Calacanis: I'll do it. Pardon my language. I'm on my second location in Oakland where I cannot get Domino's.

SPEAKER_191: This would be a funny thing to do is for this week in startups to open.

SPEAKER_498: So open like a personal one. Like, you know what? It's just for me.

SPEAKER_503: All right. So I'm going to put poor pressure. You're welcome the rest of my neighborhood. You're welcome. We did this for you.

SPEAKER_502: He's going to be looking this up this afternoon.

SPEAKER_506: You know, crazy project. Oh, it's so great. I'm in.

SPEAKER_507: All right. Back to Apple. Jason's dominoes.com. Is that domain taken or not?

SPEAKER_316: It is now that you mentioned it live on the air. Hurry up. Hurry up. Never mention domains on the air. Franchising for watching live. Hurry up.

SPEAKER_196: Yeah. You better, you better be typing. You better, we better get those little fingers going.

SPEAKER_78: All right. Uh, also they're adding a new chip, uh, to a Silicon family. Apple is adding, they're calling it M two. Wow.

Jason Calacanis: The M two. So recently, you know, recently we kind of recently when I said the iPhone is the sun and the whole company revolves around it.

SPEAKER_04: We were like, they haven't shipped that many products that aren't accessories. I should acknowledge that the chips are a big deal. Like these are a phenomenal technological accomplishment.

Jason Calacanis: The vertical integration of making their own chips gives them an insane technology mode. And not to mention the machines are bananas.

SPEAKER_04: So like, I would like to, you know, edit myself and give full credit to Apple building its own chips, which I did a story about years ago being like, this is going to be kind of a big deal. And it turns out it's a huge deal. And the chips just keep getting better.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I mean, you, you, you buy one of these. Um, it really does incentivize you to buy new machines. It was like the old day. It reminds me

SPEAKER_177: of the old days of the Pentiums. Remember when like a new Pentium chip would come out and you'd be like, Oh my God. And the Intel inside, they play the tune and you're like,

SPEAKER_00: Whoa, this computer is a lot faster than my last computer. And when your computer is a lot faster, that feels great. Yeah. I mean, it just hasn't felt that way in desktop computers or iPads for a long time. And then you get these M ones and they hit two notes. They're discernibly faster and then have absurdly, uh, more, uh, battery life. So that combination is super compelling. Now, will they keep up the battery life March? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_99: But because it's kind of at the point of being unnecessary when your laptop lasts the whole day, you're kind of like, okay, we're done here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_117: But having this incredible amount of power. They'll deprecate that battery that we all know. I don't know. They'll, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_203: They deprecate performance. So the, because they start to, they remember they got sued for intentionally slowing down your iPhone to preserve battery life.

SPEAKER_04: I mean, for one thing, the actual just usage of batteries will over time deprecate the battery life and they probably won't make it hard and expensive to replace. They made it hard to buy a new laptop.

SPEAKER_00: This is where if Apple really wanted to make a ton of money, imagine the back of your iPhone could open up like the old Blackberries or Nokia's and you can swap your battery out again.

SPEAKER_521: Wait for Apple to launch that again. And they're like, and now the newest concept in smartphones, a replaceable battery. And we're all like, oh my God.

Jason Calacanis: They'll be like, they'll be like, you can insert an SD card to expand your own memory.

SPEAKER_528: You can put an SD card in everything. You can have two SIM cards. It's like, what do you believe in miracles?

SPEAKER_521: Coming from Apple in 2025, you've used wireless AirPods, but wouldn't you like at some point to not have to worry about battery life for those of you who would like a crystal clear connection.

SPEAKER_531: We present the 2.5 inch jack.

SPEAKER_534: They did it with the last M1. Yeah. They were like, and by the way, we've now added the HDMI and an SD card.

SPEAKER_539: And we're like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_540: And then they were like, it has ports.

SPEAKER_212: And now our latest feature, we've removed the touch pad that nobody ever used or wanted.

SPEAKER_432: And like, go, go, you literally got rid of the touch bar.

SPEAKER_545: That was annoying and nobody wanted. Literally no one needs. And then they bragged about it.

SPEAKER_498: They didn't just quietly kill it. Oh no. They were just like, now we've made it so clean.

SPEAKER_547: Creatives have told us.

SPEAKER_548: You can put your fingers anywhere on the keyboard and it won't start doing things.

SPEAKER_549: Yes. And now you don't have the constant distraction of a slider bar popping up that you don't know what it does. Textual keys are now back to non contextual.

SPEAKER_325: You're welcome. You're welcome. No, they were literally like some, some folks in our community have told us they prefer the focus

SPEAKER_549: of, and they prefer not carrying six dongles in the bottom of their bag, forgetting them,

SPEAKER_139: and then wanting to kill themselves when they get to their destination and having to Amazon FedEx overnight and anchor dongle. Some of our people have told us that.

SPEAKER_551: Some people have told us that. Some people have told us.

SPEAKER_525: They're going to reintroduce Bluetooth.

SPEAKER_554: They're going to be like, now you can wirelessly connect your phone to your car. What? Go. Oh God, Apple. We love you.

SPEAKER_203: This has been the same temperature, by the way, for months, for four months. I'm holding up my Ember mug, for those of you who are not watching this.

SPEAKER_137: Wait, Ember mug figured out Bluetooth. Ember mug did, but then Apple broke it. So I can't change the temperature on my Ember mug. I just hope it's not going to cook the milk.

SPEAKER_00: I got to say, I probably have a pretty good MPS score right now, in terms of as an employer, with the, between the Ember mug and the second row courtside seats. I think your MPS score is pretty high right now. What'd you recommend working with JL to a friend?

SPEAKER_561: That's a 10. Nine or 10. That's a 10.

SPEAKER_178: I mean, look at all these presents.

SPEAKER_561: I got a red flag right here.

SPEAKER_562: I got two red flags. Two red flags. Yeah, those cost about $3, you know?

SPEAKER_563: Those thrilled to me. You're really easy to please. Yeah, I am so easy. I was just like, oh my God, this is so fun.

SPEAKER_521: I got you a kitchen magnet. It's got the golden gate bridge on it. It worked. It worked.

SPEAKER_537: It worked. I'm in. Something that's not working or working too well, depending on which side of the equation you are on. It works. Yeah, it works. It's hackers and investment frauds and drug dealers and finance.

SPEAKER_00: It turns out an investigation by Reuters has shown that at least 2.35 billion of illicit funds, again, hackers, investment frauds, drug dealers, you know, the dark economy, the black market,

SPEAKER_99: uh, has been laundered through Binance between 2017 and 2022. Now, again, this is an investigation by Reuters. They found this. So, uh, this, I don't know if I have to say allegedly or this is according to their reporting.

SPEAKER_191: Allegedly, blah, blah, blah. I mean, we're not blaming any specific person. So I think we can probably fairly say, I mean, it's the CEO's fault ultimately,

SPEAKER_566: but I'm not blaming any specific person because, but you are in charge and you're all the one.

SPEAKER_179: I mean, you basically just went ahead and built Silk Road 2, thinking there's a market need here, but you know, I'm not accusing you of anything.

SPEAKER_566: We're not accusing anybody of anything, but you're going to jail.

SPEAKER_567: Um, you may want to be, you may want to find a friendly jurisdiction,

SPEAKER_390: perhaps query the tether guys and we're hanging out the, where's the CEO of tether? You might want to buy the house next to him.

SPEAKER_571: You might want to use DuckDuckGo for that too, by the way. All right, set the table, Molly. Set the table here. What's going on?

SPEAKER_203: As only you can, Molly. As only you can, Molly. Binance, of course, is a crypto exchange that has about 120 million users globally.

SPEAKER_04: They process hundreds of billions of crypto transactions per month. They were actually banned in the United States in 2019 and then opened an entirely separate exchange in, uh, called Binance dot us that reportedly did comply with us crypto exchange laws, because ironically, even though it sometimes feels like we have none, we do have a few.

SPEAKER_576: Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_04: The there. Yeah, keep going. Yep. So between 2017 and 2021, um, that's when I think they started. Right. And that's when the laundry started in May of 2021. So about a year ago, the US Department of Justice and the IRS launched this investigation into Binance on allegations of these money laundering and tax fraud, uh, issues. Then in August, 2021, Binance enacted know your customer KYC and anti money laundering AML requirements for all users. Prior to that, they had what Reuters referred to as quote, weak AML and KYC checks that made it super easy to hide transactions. Evidently current and former Binance execs had raised concerns about the lack of these protections back in January, according to Reuters, uh, to the CEO and founder. But, uh, that person, CZ, CZ and that's like his only name, right?

SPEAKER_296: Yeah, I guess. He's like Madonna in that way. He's like Beyonce. CZ did not listen.

SPEAKER_00: Three months after the DOJ and IRS come knocking, they put in KYC and AML. So they ran this up. They got the market share, they did it illegally, allegedly, uh, they get investigated and then they tighten things up. So this seems like, um, a trend. I, I, dare I say, this is like a playbook now. Um, you know, we, we say in Silicon Valley, like move fast, break things, or never ask for permission, you know, never beg for forgiveness. Don't ask for permission kind of thing. The problem with CZ, his nickname, uh, for Chang Peng Zhao is, uh, the problem with this process is as we've seen, if you're in healthcare, uh, or say in insurance or finance, um, you don't get to move fast and break things. If you're making a video game or a social network or something that doesn't impact people acutely in a highly regulated industry, uh, you know, you might want to pursue this Molly, like sure, move fast and break things. But as we saw with Theranos, uh, as we're seeing here, um, and as we saw with Zenefits, uh, and, um, you know, insurance fraud over there, uh, where they were, I guess, faking people's insurance certifications. Like there are some highly regulated places where you could, you know, if you move too fast, get in trouble. And if you do want to reinterpret the laws, uh, which Airbnb, Lyft, Uber said, Hey, we think

SPEAKER_301: that these laws from our interpretation were okay, you will then spend a decade with each jurisdiction, you know, and, and you may win some, you may lose others.

SPEAKER_99: And in the case of ride sharing, it won in, you know, 98 out of a hundred jurisdictions. In the case of Airbnb, they won in probably 95 out of a hundred places allow Airbnb. So you just gotta be careful, you know, getting somebody a cheap taxi ride or a cheap hotel again, slightly different. And you have to look at the impact each of these has on society, an Instagram, you know, app or whatever, social network or video game, very low impact,

SPEAKER_66: transportation, housing, medium impact, health, finance, insurance, massive.

SPEAKER_99: And you will have the hammer dropped on you. This is a lesson from this week in startup for founders. The end clip here.

SPEAKER_584: The end of the lesson.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah. And also, I mean, if you build a tool that just allows for the illicit movement of money without oversight, eventually one, people are going to find that tool and use it for that. I mean, people are trying, you know, people are out here trying to use like Zelle and Venmo to just avoid paying taxes. And they've had to crack down on that, like, let alone creating sort of a new silk road style funnel for just hiding transactions at a massive scale.

Jason Calacanis: Two point some billion dollars. Also, there's this kind of bonkers situation where Binance invested 200 million dollars in Forbes after Forbes itself released a leaked document called the Tai Chi entity, which alleged that CZ and Binance had created a corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive United States regulators and secretly profit from US crypto traders.

SPEAKER_04: So Forbes reports on this leaked document explains this this structure as, quote, a strategic plan to execute a bait and switch. Setting up the an entity in the United States effectively and sort of like pretending that it was following the rules but wasn't is probably the TLDR on that. And then two years later, in 2022, Binance announces a 200 million dollar investment in Forbes, like to buy them and shut them down for leaking this thing.

SPEAKER_00: Um, it must be a coincidence. I mean, don't all crypto companies buy decrepit old media brands? Isn't that like part of the playbook?

SPEAKER_587: Yeah, sure. I don't know. Salesforce, more time.

SPEAKER_591: But had time blowed the lid off of Salesforce?

SPEAKER_587: Of course they didn't.

SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think Mark Benioff just wanted to have the time 100 and pick the time man of the year,

SPEAKER_595: or I should say person of the year.

SPEAKER_04: It's like the it's like at this point a sports team or a jet, but you just have so much money that a sports team or a jet doesn't even thrill you anymore. No, no, the timing here is bizarre.

SPEAKER_117: The timing is absolutely bizarre.

SPEAKER_00: But does Forbes, are they the ones who is it Fortune or Forbes that has the contributor network where like Forbes is that Forbes? Oh my God. So gross. It's like, I get all these people asking me to do interviews or like I get mentioned in this and I'm like,

SPEAKER_99: why am I being mentioned in Forbes? I didn't get called by a journalist and it's like, oh no, that's the contributor network. I'm like, how do I know that? They're like, oh, do you see this little icon over here? That means it's a random person who we allow to write about insurance on the site, who's an insurance broker, and they write about themselves. And I'm like, do you need page views that much that you created this thing? And I guess it's a, I think it's a talk about bait and switch. I think the Forbes bait and switch is like 90% of their traffic comes from these, you know, um, you know, self promotional articles and yeah, the contributors, contributors, whatever that means, free content. But then they have this facade of like, oh, these elite journalists, theoretically not elite, but you know, there's some real journalists somewhere in the building and then they sell advertising and the advertisers are getting 90% garbage

SPEAKER_08: and 10%, you know, theoretically elite journalism. Yeah. Great journalism. Um,

SPEAKER_10: interestingly, and I had forgotten this, we did report, or I did see that what they were going to

SPEAKER_142: do with Forbes was take it public via SPAC and that plan was called off six days ago. Um, this story has everything. This is like, this is like Stefan on SNL.

Chamath Palihapitiya: This story has everything to go to, the hottest club to go to is CZ in Hong Kong. It's right below Tether, the hottest spot in the world. You had money laundered, drug deal and media SPAC.

SPEAKER_610: Oh my God, we get all this. And we are literally, we need to shake up the age range on this show because we are literally telling all the same jokes. No, we never had a Stefan joke. That's my

SPEAKER_203: favorite character for a long time. I know. I love that one so much. That is the perfect

SPEAKER_142: example, the perfect analogy for what's happening here. Like what they, what he said was, I think

SPEAKER_00: John Mulaney is something. They said John Mulaney would write that for whatever, a hater, Bill Hader. Yeah. And he wouldn't get to see it.

SPEAKER_177: Well, they would write one script and then he would change things that were so outrageous that, you know, he was always cracking up. Yeah. And he, and he came up with this, which he said was a combination of just trying to keep it together. And the feeling of being in a club

SPEAKER_281: as a club kid, taking ecstasy and like rolling too hard and be like,

SPEAKER_305: Oh my God. That was the, I mean, Stefan as a character was literally the greatest.

SPEAKER_108: So genius. We watched Stefan, SNL best of it's, it's the greatest. We must've watched like 30 of those a few weeks back for that exact same reason. Cause it's brilliant. Um, next level. Okay.

SPEAKER_115: We gotta wrap up, but we gotta go talk about the, uh, uh, what's the guy's name? Elon Elon Elon Musk

SPEAKER_179: believes Twitter. I was just had a conversation with somebody who referred to him almost like Ellen.

SPEAKER_203: Ellen. Like I was like, where do you, it's kind of nice to know that the permeation is not complete.

SPEAKER_626: Yeah. Well, here's the thing. The something, something Twitter. Yes. And, uh, obviously there's

SPEAKER_00: a bot problem. And, uh, this price is either, as he said in the, uh, all in interview we did, like maybe the price gets negotiated, the deal gets canceled. Um, but headline today, headline today,

SPEAKER_04: tee it up if you will. Um, headline today is that according to a letter from Elon Musk's lawyers, uh, in a sec filing quote, Mr. Musk believes the company is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights and the company's corresponding obligations under the merger agreement. And the letter goes on to say, and this is kind of the key legal language should must be trying to get out of this deal. This is a clear material breach of Twitter's obligations under the merger agreement. And Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting there from including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement. Now, Matt Levine from Bloomberg has written several times that this is like, that there is no such right. Um, and that material impact is a very, very, very high bar to prove, but he has also gone on to

SPEAKER_179: say, you know, effectively like Musk is going to do whatever he wants and nobody's going to enforce

SPEAKER_00: the rules here. So, well, and if you look at it, um, this is something that Twitter has been in opaque about, you know, the bot problem. And so if they, I don't think any of us believe it's less than 5%, right? So if it is in fact more, or you get a bunch of data and it looks really bad now that

SPEAKER_99: puts Twitter's board in a really precarious position, I think, which is, do you want to go into discovery and have every conversation from engineers to the CEO, from the CEO to the board and then 50 other

SPEAKER_478: conversations in between where you talk about how you're going to explain the bot problem to the public shareholders. And that is chaos. And we don't like what Twitter has said is, you know,

SPEAKER_04: it's really hard to measure this. Musk does not believe that he has made it very clear. I keep calling him Musk. Like I'm trying to like distance myself from this story here. Um, Mr. Musk, Ellen has said, Ellen has said over and over, he does not believe that it's that hard to measure it. Twitter keeps saying it is hard to measure it. No, absolutely. I mean, I think you're 100% right. They probably don't want to go into discovery. Nobody wants to deal with the toxicity of a long, long lawsuit. It seems to me not possible to go having zero knowledge whatsoever that what's happening here is he's gonna like, it's exactly what Matt Levine says. As usual, he's gonna walk away from the deal. Twitter could probably sue him, but they're not going to. He does what

SPEAKER_642: he wants. There's no rules. I literally have no information on this. Um, I haven't talked to

SPEAKER_645: Elon about it or anybody, but my 95% chance here would be a lower price or it doesn't happen. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, and also the price is overpriced now. So I, I would just, if I was

SPEAKER_248: Twitter, I shouldn't buy it. How do you feel about $34 and 20 cents? Yeah. Like, and maybe at 3420,

SPEAKER_04: maybe it's, but that's not a very fun name. So he's, or a fun number. So he's probably not

SPEAKER_652: gonna do it. No, it's still got 420 in it. 34, 20, 69, 34, 20, 34, 23, 420. Uh, but it is

SPEAKER_09: what it is. Um, yeah, we're 42, 0, 6, 9, uh, round up the penny. So we'll keep watching this,

SPEAKER_645: but I think it's gonna be a summer of debate and, you know, ScanArps is the largest, I believe

SPEAKER_248: still the largest law firm in the world. Like they know what they're doing. Um, finally, as we wrap, Beijing is wrapping up its DD investigation. According to the wall street journal, CCP investigators will complete, I'm sorry, their investigation of Chinese ride sharing company, DD, uh, the company's app will be restored to the Chinese app store as soon as this week after being removed almost a year ago. Stock was up 30% on the news. Um, I have a horse in this race. Theoretically Uber still owns a large position. So full disclosure there. Um, but you remember this has more to do with Chinese and American relations because they went public already and we're doing

SPEAKER_645: great. And then China said no more companies from China on American exchange. Exactly. That's what

SPEAKER_04: it was about. It was that DD went public on a U S exchange. Um, and I, I mean, you know, you can only interpret it as sort of a rent revenge tour and a warning to other companies not to do that. It's that, it's the protectionism campaign in full force, but at least it looks like DD at least is going to recover from it. Although during that time, the time of this investigation,

SPEAKER_203: yeah, it's stock is down 84% down to a market cap of $12 billion. Is this the low right here? $2 and 53 cents. Oh no, that's right now. That's today. June 6th. Yeah. It's up a little bit,

SPEAKER_15: but I mean, I, you know, so basically. Yeah. They were worth six times more or something like that.

SPEAKER_203: So, oh, and relatedly, there's this nice note. Relatedly DD will be delisting from the New York stock exchange and listing in the Hong Kong stock exchange. Kel surprise. Yeah. Kel surprise.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I mean, it's all going to be, I mean, basically all of these companies will just trade in Hong Kong and like the decoupling. We'll see how far the decoupling goes. It seems like right now, uh, media finance, these things will be decoupled and then, you know, manufacturing, probably not. So, you know, maybe it was a bridge too far having, you know, our apps in China. We never got our apps in China, having their companies listed here and them having less control over those companies and those companies having more Western influence in them. I either boards of the companies, et cetera.

SPEAKER_04: So it is what it is and more visibility, right? I'm sure that that would lead to, I mean, investors would probably get some visibility, but I could imagine China. I'd be curious to know what visibility U S investors might have into the business as a result of DD listing on and on New York stock

SPEAKER_248: exchange, as opposed to Hong Kong, maybe there's no difference, but basically, no, I think you're going to have to start obeying the securities laws of the West. And so, you know, that means,

SPEAKER_645: you know, information rights and, you know, where do you legally, um, reside in terms of shareholder complaints, right? Um, and then what influence does the Chinese government has? Can the Chinese government take a company trading in the U S and then tell them they have to hand over their data or not? Well, if it's in Hong Kong problem solved, the super clarity here, Hong Kong is China, China's Hong Kong, you know, they're in charge the end. So I guess they just wanted to have complete control as opposed to questionable or partial control over these companies. And now they have complete control over them. They're anybody buying Chinese stocks that are listed in Hong Kong, like,

SPEAKER_248: good luck to you, but I would never do it because it's a black box over there. They can do whatever they want. They do do whatever they want. They could tell kids they can play 10 hours of video games or no hours of video games a week. They can tell you, you can have an education startup startup or not. Um, they can tell you shared prosperity is the goal or maximizing shareholder revenue is a goal. They told everybody shared prosperity is a goal. It's a, it's a distinctly different benchmark than the West and the West. We say, you know, shareholder value is what you're going

SPEAKER_645: for. And, you know, on the margins, ESG stakeholder, this and that, but still you're responsible for your shareholders first and foremost. And in China, shared prosperity is the goal. So if you want to live in a communist country, you can move to China and have the stock market be run on shared prosperity,

SPEAKER_04: whatever that means. I encourage everyone. Uh, should you want to know what that's been like lately? My former marketplace colleague, Jennifer pack is in Shanghai and she's a big foodie and her Instagram, J pack radio, P a K J P a K radio has been. The most fascinating dystopian look inside what that lockdown has looked like for two months. And it's basically just been her journey to like, try to get food. And it's all these pictures of the, like the government handouts when they come and like, they have rotten vegetables or they have this, and then she, they're trying to do this, like barter thing. And I just am finding it like, just as a look behind a curtain that you don't usually get to see, go follow Jennifer pack. Cause it is, it's absolutely been mesmerizing. Like for people who complained about the effectively non-existent actual quote unquote lockdowns in

SPEAKER_670: the United States, like kids, you have no idea. I mean, her feet is really, um, hungry, but I'm also

SPEAKER_450: looking at, you know, like day 58 looks pretty, pretty slim pickings and, and she's seven pretty rough,

SPEAKER_04: you know, and she's a foreign journalist effectively. Like she's Chinese, but yeah, a journalist, you know, from the United States and like, so she's in a pretty good neighborhood. They have like pretty decent access, relatively speaking. I don't think that anybody in her neighborhood had to kill their pets, but like, it's just bananas to see the, and to read her captions and see the scramble that they had to go through to get to any one of these. And like, she had to make like all these spring rolls because they got pork handed out from the government that was about to go bad. So they had to make like 150 spring rolls to just be like, I don't know, we got to use up the government pork. Yeah. Crazy times.

SPEAKER_681: It's just so interesting. Well, you know, it's, um, if you want to see Jennifer, it's a different

SPEAKER_645: world. Jennifer and yeah, I'm glad the locked lockdown's over. I saw, you know, people running into the streets, getting to go out and eat food. So yeah. Um, I, I hope they, uh, and, you know, and Sweden ended their lockdown a year early in the United States. It's basically everybody decided

SPEAKER_642: we're just going to go through the storm, you know, or people will have the choice to go through the storm.

SPEAKER_02: We have a, we have a mask mandate back in our County. I heard that, uh, yeah, Dan Danbury and a couple of other places out there now have a mask mandate, but people are not doing it.

Jason Calacanis: So it's like Alameda County. Yeah. It's there was a really interesting, interesting David Leonard piece. Now we've got plenty of show and I should stop talking, but interesting piece in the upshot

SPEAKER_04: New York times where according to the data masks work mandates don't like counties that had mandates had almost the same exact rates, even though a well fitting and 95 actually does work to prevent right. Transmitting and receiving COVID. Yeah. Mandates make no difference because people are wearing cloth masks that are here. They have their dicks hanging out because they're below their noses or they take them off to eat or whatever. And Alameda County matters two months later, two months

SPEAKER_177: after the surge. If you lock everybody in their home, or if you were to like, say you have to wear

SPEAKER_00: an N 95 and you inspected it and you walked up and down the plane and you had like police officers inside tackling people who took their masks off to take a sip of coffee. Like, yes, it could theoretically work, but in practice, people are wearing bandanas, right?

Jason Calacanis: Wait, and then just, and then Omicron is so contagious that the second you pull your mask down to like, take some, eat some food on a plane, but we got it. Yeah, you're done.

SPEAKER_35: And we're done. All right. Listen, it's been a lot of show. Anyway, we got it. We'll see you all tomorrow. It's going to be a big week. Stick with us. If you are a founder of a pre Series A company,

SPEAKER_01: you haven't raised that Series A yet, which is really hard. Well, we wanted to invite you to Founder University. This is a two day intensive course. It takes place on June 13th and 14th. It's remote. It's free. We limit the number of people who can come. We asked you to apply. And this virtual workshop is free for founders and helps you understand how to fundraise and pitch,

SPEAKER_09: how to hire great people, how to build a world-class product, how to execute on your sales and marketing and some growth techniques as well. The launch team and I have been doing this for a long time. It has been amazing for us to get to know founders. And that's why we do it. Of course, we want to help folks as many as possible. That's part of our mandate. But really our mandate at launch here at this week in startups and you know, the syndicate, which is where we invest, we meet and invest in companies is we want to back builders. And so we use these events as a way to get to know you. And if you're building something and we see you're incredibly building something interesting in the world, well, then we want to invest in you. So truth be told, every time we do found a university, a half dozen of those people we wind up funding in the next year or so. So it's a great way for us to spend time with entrepreneurs. We're going to be joined by a lot of experts. My friend Becky DeGraw, who's my attorney from Wilson Sincini, will be speaking at the event Fitbots co-founder Jesse will be speaking Marlowe CEO, Mary Fox will be speaking. So we get a bunch of our portfolio companies who have been crushing it and who have learned a lot. And we've seen that they are qualified builders, we have them come speak at the event. So you see how we do things here at this week in startups and launch and the syndicate. We like to create a flywheel. We invest in people who come out of found university, some number of them really crush it and become world class companies. And it's not guaranteed you have to do the work, folks, the ones who do, then we have them speak at a later founder of university. So a lot of the great companies we've met came to a founder of university, they got to know us, they learned something that was worth their time. And that's really what we do with the agenda. We try to make it worth your time to take two days off work, essentially. Now it's remote. So you can consider it your weekend, even though it's taking place around the week. You consider it professional development. And if you learn one or two important things about running a company, fundraising, growth, hiring, well, those one or two things will pay for those two days, I am absolutely certain of it. Now you have to apply again. So you can register at founder dot university. Yes, it's a great domain. So go to founder dot university and sign up. We also have a course called angel dot university if you want to invest in the companies and you think the philosophy I've explained here about how I invest in companies and invested in over 300 of them. If you think this is an interesting way to meet startups early help them and invest in them. Well, you can read my deal memos as we invest in new companies and you can join us on that adventure. And I do this through a course called angel university that has raised close to $200,000 for charity. And you can sign up for angel university at angel dot university. We do it four times a year, great program. And it's just me and my partner, Mike Savino, talking about how we pick companies, how we evaluate them, how we diligence them, how we source them, like founder university as a source of investment and deal flow for us. And that three or four hour course actually, I think it's more like four or five hours is well worth your time. All the proceeds from angel university go to charity. And again, over 175,000, I think at this point, it's not charity. I'm very proud of that work. And founder university is free. But you do have to apply and we do pick people who have built a little bit of something. So we're looking for you to have some skin in the game. We have a founder university 12 week program, which you can also see at founder dot university will be starting our third cohort shortly. And you can apply for that program. If you have not started building or you're very early stages, haven't incorporated yet, you're nowhere near the series a you're kind of in the solo or co-founder situation, and you're just starting to build maybe, maybe you've incorporated, maybe you have it. And that's a 12 week course. And that's another great one that we do. So please join us founder dot university. And if you want to invest in these great companies, angel dot university.