SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody, welcome back. It's Monday is a big week friend of the pod. Brad Gerstner has penned an open letter It's exploded on Wall Street today to the Meta Corporation aka Facebook on behalf of his fund altimeter capital

SPEAKER_01: We're gonna break down why he wrote this letter and what it says

Jason Calacanis: Yeah, it's basically a plan for Meta to cut capex boost free cash flow or one assumes

SPEAKER_06: Altcap is out. We'll see and then we cover the firefest island back in the news as a home

SPEAKER_07: for luxury properties to be purchased with nfts and

SPEAKER_00: Fast company is published a hit piece on divvy homes and the ceo adina heffetz and we'll break that down and just how for you You can identify when a story feels biased and it's a hit piece

SPEAKER_08: Which is one we kind of agree feels like it's got the vibe. It's got the vibe

SPEAKER_10: And then we just have some random musing random musings at the end of the show because you know what we miss each other on the weekend

SPEAKER_13: And then when we come back together, we just want to talk about like china and the future of humanity and whether we're progressing in the right direction And then j-trade portfolios and yeah, we just we it's like we you know, you gotta hang out

SPEAKER_15: Reconnecting on mondays standard monday show. So it's gonna be a great episode stick with us

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SPEAKER_20: All right, everybody. It's monday and there's a lot of news For us to discuss but first up molly, how was your weekend? You have a decent weekend?

SPEAKER_23: I did I did some really good hikes not dangerous at all

SPEAKER_25: Uh some halloween decorating some real quality time with my child It's just it was a great weekend. It was like Just chill. There was like a lot of travel recently

SPEAKER_26: Just shut it all down. It's great

SPEAKER_30: It's awesome. A little down time always a good thing a little down time always a good thing and I I got a little down time The the kids and the wife went out a little bit on saturday and I just I worked I was like, you know what i'm just gonna go dive into the slack replies And just you know, we have this founder slack with 400 of our founders in it And so at any point in time

SPEAKER_31: I can just do two or three hours of just going through our portfolio companies are just saying hi and jumping into conversations It's wildly efficient. Oh, it's wonderful. I know it is kind of nice

SPEAKER_23: My son was actually supposed to have friends over on sunday and I was like this is gonna be amazing

SPEAKER_34: I'm gonna get so much work done and then they bailed on him and I was like son of a biscuit So I had to go to how to go to bed

SPEAKER_38: I do this thing where i'm like I have to go to bed at eight And I get in my laptop. I get a better

SPEAKER_40: The device gets you every time now if you want to

SPEAKER_13: Do it on purpose i'm like goodnight son, you know, like I have to

SPEAKER_41: Go to bed now and it's really just like get some work done. I got some love him But he really wants to hang out with me still

SPEAKER_30: Yeah, you know i'm i'm right around that point where they I understand you know 12 to 15 ish they start You know like the peer group and other things become as important as mom and dad or whatever and so I think i'm you know enjoying the last days with my 12 year old before She starts uh finding more meaning, but it's been delightful. Uh, I took oh by the way I took them all to see black adam on friday at my favorite movie theater We have these fancy uh synopolis theater shout out to them like you press a button you can order food So when you have kids this is like a super unlock because it's dinner and a movie at the same time. Oh, hell yeah Yeah, so in terms of efficiency, you know what i'm talking about, you know Even down to I just have to pay one credit card bill I don't have to fill out two slips I can just zip zip zip and it's dessert So, you know, we get everything done and my lord these kids love this movie theater and doing this and it was was black adam good Excellent the kids loved it. I'm not a rock guy like i'm not into the rock I know that he's a big draw and I was super skeptical about this one, but

SPEAKER_04: but no spoilers or anything, but

SPEAKER_30: it does seem based on the uh conversation with with Which we had with um the new head of people missed it last thursday We had the new head of dc comics on uh lon harris who's running the show over there And uh, he said he was gonna multiple timelines in his new version of this, you know how to manage dc

SPEAKER_61: And i'm really much very much enjoying You know this timeline which is the kind of the snyder patty jenkins verse and now Seems like the rock is going to be the anchor of this because black adam which is a character. I really did not care about

SPEAKER_20: Mm-hmm. He's awesome. He's just an awesome fun character. Um, and he's gonna fit in quite nicely

SPEAKER_64: And they had this like, um pierce brosnan was in there as long as they leave room for aquaman lon as long as you leave room for

SPEAKER_65: Aquaman because i'm in the mix. I love the rock I am a long time rock fan. I'm gonna go all the way back to the people's eyebrow like

SPEAKER_64: Love the rock, but don't be kicking my aquaman out of bed for eating crackers here. Yeah, no, he's great

SPEAKER_30: I I and uh, so anyway delightful film delightful time with the kids. It was very cute too because you know, I got the six-year-olds and Um, we sit in these big chairs now when you're in a double chair like two It's almost like two reclining chairs like two first class giant chairs

SPEAKER_31: With a little arm between it and she pulled the arm up and she just started snuggling me, you know We've got my arm around her head on my chest watching black adam together while eating pepperoni pizza

SPEAKER_30: I mean you're talking about like peak experience in life for me pizza my daughter and a comic book film It's the best everything is right in the world. It was like

Chamath Palihapitiya: You were reading arrival this weekend. So you you were having peak experience because you're a sci-fi nerd

SPEAKER_23: Well, I had this like kind of awesome thing happen where my phone died overnight because it didn't charge It wasn't seated right on the wireless charger. So then on sunday morning. I got up and nobody else was up Hmm, and I read a book on the couch like some sort of bizarre old school

SPEAKER_07: I lit a candle I didn't really but I was just like is is it is it like the before times pre-industrial age? Like what is happening? I book on paper physical paper

SPEAKER_86: Did you make yourself a cup of tea amazing spot of tea and now gross? What is like tea? Why is everybody in the tea now?

SPEAKER_88: I just have you noticed this like tea is like

SPEAKER_30: stereotyping you as like

SPEAKER_88: Just have coffee

SPEAKER_30: Jerks, I just thought you were trying to celebrate the moments of your life, you know I know I really like it's almost feels like it's a tv commercial like You're doing it for me speaking of doing it for me A friend of the pod brad gerstner Decided he uh, you know, he's a shareholder in this meta corporation and he decided he had had enough Of losing money apparently apparently as mark zuckerberg, you know spends money like a drunken sailor on This vr debacle and brad gerstner Decided he would write an open letter now He's he's got a lot of facebook stock and as we've talked about

Chamath Palihapitiya: zuckerberg has these super shares like he his zuckerberg's like great great great grandchildren are gonna control this company based on The way he structured the way he talks about it

SPEAKER_98: But maybe you can give us an overview of this letter that brad wrote

SPEAKER_23: Yeah, this is a shot across the bow So it is as you said An open letter published to mark zuckerberg and the meta board urging them to tighten their belt and sharpen their investment focus The plan would 2x annual free cash flow to 40 billion dollars double down on ai But put a cap on metaverse related investments. So not that kind not the metaverse kind of ai for some context of course meta has been Tanking to quite an astonishing degree actually meta stock is down 55 percent compared to an average 19 percent for its big tech peers It's down that's over the last 18 months. It's down 60 30 percent just in the past 52 weeks We'll get to the letter and some of those details in a minute But there was a comment from bill gurley almost immediately in response to brad gerstner's tweet about the open letter Saying meta's pe ratio has fallen from 23x to 12x

SPEAKER_100: It now trades at less than half the average pe of its peers. And so This price to earnings ratio

SPEAKER_103: Price earnings ratio. Yeah, and how much money you make times

SPEAKER_106: Yeah, how much money you times your stock price, right? Yeah, your market cap. So you divide the market cap by yeah

SPEAKER_23: So what's interesting is that I think for a while people have been looking at that? P.E. Ratio for example, they've been looking at metas declining stock price. They've been saying meta Still makes tons of money on its ad business despite this like weird metaverse distraction

SPEAKER_38: We think this might be a buying opportunity. Like there's been a little bit of a slack

SPEAKER_23: In the system, right? I think let out like well, we'll just see where it goes and what again and all of a sudden Apparently everybody's reached the breaking point all at once and they're like you got to pull it together as evidenced by this open letter

SPEAKER_30: Yeah, this is something that's been brewing to give people a little Sort of back channel on this because you know, we're all in the same peer group bill girl He's been talking about this for years. He's blogged about it publicly

SPEAKER_61: So I'm not speaking out of school here But we've all had a conversation since google decided when they figured out their money printing machine They said it's best for us and we've talked about this on the show many times about to just hire every single person we can Because we have so much cash. We have so much free cash flow C F Why not just hire talented people and figure out what they're going to do later? So imagine a basketball team like let's say the lakers or the warriors We're printing so much money that people were paying a million dollars uh For season tickets as opposed to you know 50 000 or 100 000 for season tickets And uh, the sponsors were paying a billion dollars to sponsor the arena and there was just tons of cash there And there was no salary cap Well, what would be the logical thing for? You know the folks at uh, the warriors to do it would be to hire every single person you say hey kevin direct You're making 50 million a year. We'll pay you 200 million a year And then you have kevin durant coming off the bench Yeah, right Um, or you know your 30th best player would be the ceo Or with the star player of the lakers, right? You know you'd have lebron coming off the bench whatever it is That's what happened in silicon valley with the talent wars. This was a

SPEAKER_118: This was done explicitly by the google team

SPEAKER_61: To block people from creating competitors and facebook followed suit the number of employees at facebook is truly extraordinary There's 85 000 people there and I think three or four years ago. He mentions in his letter there were 25 000 so you have to ask yourself like Why do you have triple the number of employees? What are they actually doing? Right

SPEAKER_79: And that's what nobody can figure out it was its very own catch and kill strategy Yes scoop them all up give them a de minimis amount of work pay them plenty

SPEAKER_23: And nobody else can get tired. Correct. And so this strategy though in a down market

SPEAKER_61: Uh when people are like, hey, why would I buy you know? I have other options with my money and I got to think logically here

SPEAKER_30: The combination of too many people and 10 billion dollars a year being burned incinerated on vr headsets On this crazy debacle. It's just weird It's just like those two things together. I think are what are depressing and apparently nobody wants to own the stock But this is bill gurley's influence on I think the peer group of you know him saying like hmm And I think uber twitter and google a number of these companies are going to face something similar

SPEAKER_61: Which is why not be more profitable buy back your shares and maybe give a dividend

SPEAKER_30: All of those things would be on the table to drive the share price up

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SPEAKER_23: Let's talk a little bit about what's in the letter and then I want to talk about I actually do want to talk about this approach of an open letter because It's very interesting. It's very aggressive Brad opens the letter by stating quote I'm sharing an open letter strongly encouraging meta to streamline and focus its path forward like many other companies in a zero rate world Meta has drifted into the land of excess too many people too many ideas too little urgency This lack of focus and fitness is obscured when growth is easy, but deadly when growth slows and technology changes So as we mentioned, it's a three-step plan to double fcf to 40 billion dollars per year Including reduce headcount expense like you were just talking about by at least 20% And take that number of employees Back to a mid 2021 level so not even you know I mean, it's like the number of employees is up 3x from 25 000 to 85 000 in just last four years This is talking about getting rid of A relatively small number of those employees reduce annual capex by at least five billion dollars Meta has apparently gone from 15 billion in annual capex in 2018 19 and 20 to 30 billion in annual capex in 2022 That is not inclusive. We should be clear of the metaverse expenditures like that's just You know the money they're using to acquire upgrade and maintain physical assets like property Plants building technology or equipment. So there's so he's saying

SPEAKER_41: Cut that by 5 billion before you even get to metaverse

SPEAKER_70: Yeah, I mean they have so much cash coming out of that big machine known as facebook. It's so profitable

SPEAKER_61: That you know, they can do things like build huge campuses. They can buy land and buildings And then also obviously, you know paying to make these headsets and then nobody using them And even though they're expensive or whatever, you know, they're obviously subsidizing them a bit. So yeah, it's a lot of capex And it's probably largely unnecessary and you know, 10% of 85,000 is 8500 people, you know You know, so you double that and you get to 17,000 people, right? So 17,000 people and brad mentions this like hey listen I know these are real people but understand and again back to the sort of common discussion going on He says those people would go back into the startup ecosystem. They easily find jobs So I know these are people with families in some cases and bills to pay You don't want to have to worry about them. So that kind of dovetails with maybe the unwinding of this catch and kill strategy this You know taking players off the market strategy Maybe it's unnecessary to do that It would be better to take that money And maybe buy back your stock or give a dividend or just have more money And more profits which would then make it more attractive to buy the stock

SPEAKER_23: He closes the letter by saying quote. We don't have any demands We simply wanted to further engage and continue sharing our thoughts as an interested shareholder We believe in this team

SPEAKER_06: We know meta has more reach more relevance and more incredible opportunities from for growth than almost any platform on the planet

SPEAKER_07: so Here We are all familiar with the famous scene in succession where adrian brody

SPEAKER_23: Yeah, plays their biggest investor calls logan roy to him like ultimate power play makes him go on this like crazy crazy walk. There we go. Yeah, and Yeah, I was like you got to get the picture of him in all his layers and his like hoodie and stuff because his Well, you know layers are for players His style is not dissimilar to brad who and the few times I have met him seems to be a kind of a casual Kind of a casual. Oh dear god. We put his face on adrian brody But so like that was a private meeting As portrayed in the movie and it was a real air of the show. It's a really big deal It's like i'm a huge investor and I have concerns I have to assume and I do not know

SPEAKER_06: Anything here, but I have to assume that meetings like this must have occurred with mark zuckerberg. Of course they have. Yeah. Yeah

SPEAKER_23: So to me what is really interesting about this letter is that it is being published in public because that suggests to me that the adrian brody clan bank meetings did not work

SPEAKER_136: Precisely your your assessment would undoubtedly be correct. So yeah, of course these conversations have occurred

SPEAKER_61: Uh management frequently meets with large shareholders or take the temperature. Hey, because they could buy more shares They could trim their position. So you want to at least know what they're thinking and so all of the large companies know who owns whether

SPEAKER_30: Whether it's altimeter or fidelity or whoever owns large positions. I just want to check in with them. Hey, uh, how's things going and? This is uh, pretty much an activist Uh letter now Now it's not demanding board seats or demanding Governance changes or demanding a change in personnel. It's just making some suggestions. So on the scale of like constructive private Constructive private notes to activism. This is like somewhere in between. Yeah, it's constructive

SPEAKER_61: Yet forceful public feedback and now aggressive. Yeah Yeah, so the fact that it's public you're correct It's like 10 times more aggressive than giving it privately But it it what it signals to me is frustration

SPEAKER_30: That the message if you were going to game theory this The message was delivered at the clan bank The message wasn't Taken it was ignored

SPEAKER_61: And okay next step is we make it public now the next step of this is We sell the Stock and we clear our position and we're done and then the stock goes down more because If large institutions are selling that means who's buying Retail I don't know other institutions, but you know, you probably have a better place to put your money

SPEAKER_00: Than a company that does not have financial discipline. We better own apple better own tesla better to own uber better own microsoft

SPEAKER_61: There are better options and that's where the peer group comes in if their pe is half of their peer group What that says is Just people are sellers of the sock and it just keeps plummeting down. So the question from here is does zuckerberg even care?

SPEAKER_23: Yeah, I mean if he doesn't care in private It you know, it's so interesting because I read this letter you know me to be a bit of a cowgirl And you've seen the occasional response that I have when I perceive that someone's trying to tell me what to do

SPEAKER_06: Sure, and I am not gonna lie to you. I had that response reading this letter and you know me to be no mark zuckerberg defender here But I read this letter and I was like, huh if I were The god king of my thing and I believed in my own genius and I was like

SPEAKER_23: Nobody understands that i'm making a long-term play. I would read this and I would be furious I'd be like this is short-term thinking you're just following the crowd with this ai thing I have a vision that's bigger than all of you. You fools like it made me wonder what the It is there an expectation that this will actually land in a way that could change The trajectory of the company

SPEAKER_94: Um, because I think this is it's part of a process. Yeah

SPEAKER_61: It's part of a process and so the next part of the process is do people keep selling their and moving their position out of meta into a competitor, right? so

SPEAKER_112: That's the key issue here. If you look at this chart, you'll see metas revenue versus total operating expenses and

SPEAKER_61: You know in a tech company these things your operating expense should not grow in parallel with your revenue In other words, like it's it's a fixed cost business in some ways, right? You should

SPEAKER_30: Have a fixed cost the more people who buy your software like the next incremental purchaser of your service or product

SPEAKER_61: Should not you know if you get one more dollar in software revenue for canva for figma for adobe

SPEAKER_30: One more dollar in advertising revenue. You shouldn't see a dollar in expense. You might see 10 cents or five cents But you shouldn't see like a full dollar because you're giving something that's digital Right, it's I mean sure you need more servers, but you don't need An exact amount to the revenue now with something like

SPEAKER_166: But now he's building an entire planet that costs money

SPEAKER_13: You have to invest in the future planet. It's a virtual thing a whole new entire world Universe even it costs money you have to and you have to spend money to make money Don't you in a long term, you know, like i'm just saying I think I could imagine the argument even though

SPEAKER_23: I think you're totally right I would be surprised if there was an expectation that zuckerberg was going to see this receive it in some way that he had not Received earlier conversations in private and go like yeah, you know what you're right. I'm going to trim the sales here I'm going to dial it back

SPEAKER_171: Well now take a look at this chart and this is um looking at

SPEAKER_30: um alphabet aka google meta aka facebook nobody can call their service what we all call it as civilians you notice that trend too

SPEAKER_145: Like well, yeah, i'm not i told you when they changed the name. I was like that's that's the biggest red flag to me ever

SPEAKER_15: When you change your name as a company you're screwed

SPEAKER_89: Yeah, so i'm just gonna call this what it is green in this chart is google blue is facebook The the facebook corporation i'm not going for your silly names

SPEAKER_61: But if you look you notice the light green to the dark green you notice that gap between those two Widens over time in other words, they become more profitable, right? So there's their operating expense at 20 billion in 2022 and their uh, you know revenue over at 69

SPEAKER_112: Is quarterly now google's opex was only 20 billion compared to

SPEAKER_118: facebook's 15 billion, you know like a third more 30 let's say But then you look at the top line 28 versus 69. It's more than double Top line so that just shows you like

SPEAKER_123: In other words for every dollar google spends they make more than three for every dollar

SPEAKER_61: Facebook is making they're making it spends they're making two that you know And so that's just where you're seeing the it's a operational efficiency now Of course if you were to take out this, you know billions of dollars in salaries and billions of dollars in this

SPEAKER_00: investment in VR, you know, you'd be concerned now I can see this too is if you as a shareholder want to bet on the future and you believe vr and ar Is the next mobile then facebook

SPEAKER_61: Is doing something crazy? And they're not operating this business for efficiency. They're operating it for the future The promise of vr is more important than the profitability of today So buy the shares if you believe in that vision if you are a cutthroat shareholder and you only want the shares to go up in value Then you would invest in a company that buys back their shares and operates purely For profit or mostly for profit now if you look at microsoft and apple

SPEAKER_30: They do buybacks they I think microsoft gives dividends, right? So you start to look at those two companies. They're saying you know what we're tech companies

SPEAKER_61: We're growing at this incredible clip, but we're also going to give you a lot of value here in terms of how we manage

SPEAKER_30: This business and throw off cash in the case of microsoft. It's the dividend in case of apple They do a lot of buybacks

SPEAKER_00: And so I think this is why warren buffett is in love with apple And many people are in love with microsoft and in a down market People are going to look at these fundamentals

SPEAKER_89: Almost makes me want to make a j trade here. This is what i'm talking about like there was something about this letter

SPEAKER_25: But I know like there was something about this letter that made me go like

SPEAKER_06: Hang on here. I don't want to be in this uncomfortable position But they're making a long-term bet and they might be right. I don't know one thing I did think was really interesting though in the

SPEAKER_23: replies to Brad's original tweet was from someone who tweeted Henry avery as someone who spends 50 million plus on ads annually I can tell you They have completely neglected advertisers as of late their ad targeting went from the best in the industry to unusable and unprofitable Tiktok is superior Zuck needs to be right about the metaverse or meta is a zero I would like to get somebody on to try to collaborate or corroborate this opinion. Yeah If I don't know if this is related to the apple Changes or not But this to me felt like a real bomb like it's one thing to say Yeah, because then there's no hope that that revenue line keeps going higher, right? Like the ad machine has been a money printing machine. That's just been

SPEAKER_124: What if that goes down now the gap between the two? Yeah, those things if that starts coming down and expenses have been going up

SPEAKER_61: Well, now you're going to become not a profitable company You can become a breakeven company or something and then people are going to totally say Well, what how does this valuation even make sense? I do think directionally i've heard the same thing from my startups Uh, and so field report is startups who were spending hundreds of thousands millions of dollars hundreds of thousands a month millions of dollars tens of millions of dollars a month on facebook and instagram To sell apps to sell software are telling me it's not worth it It's not working anymore d2c companies started telling me last year Now this is all because of the tracking that you can no longer do on phones because apple, you know gave that headwind Uh to the industry and said, you know what you can't track people even anonymously on their phones So that's a headwind and should zuckerberg Be hiding in burling game by the airport in a virtual world or should he be fixing these problems? Exactly and if the leader is a real problem Yeah, I mean this would be like me not showing up for the pot or investment team meetings He'd be like, well, what what are we supposed to take from this, right? Like when the leader where the leader spends their time that kind of signals something and The focus level at facebook on their advertising is horrific

SPEAKER_189: All right, listen

SPEAKER_190: This brand has a special place in my heart the founders brandon and carmen are twist listeners They've been for a long time and they told me they started this company I kid you not after listening to the pod and reading my book angel. Oh my god, that warms my heart In fact, their first angel investor wound up being a big hit. What do they do with the money they made? They use the returns from that investment to start a macadamia nuts business I am crazy happens to be my favorite nut I love it with dark chocolate and you can see this graphic on the screen Not all nuts are created equal This is why you need to get on macadamia nuts compared to peanuts almonds cashews and walnuts macadamia nuts are higher in omega-7s That's what's been linked to fat loss and natural collagen and they have more healthy fats They also have less carbs because uh, you know, listen I'm trying to lose a little weight here and the product is vegan keto and paleo take it from me I eat these macadamias all the time. They're totally delicious And I love the bars. They have spicy ones. They've got dark chocolate covered ones. Here's what I want you to do Here's your call to action get in on macadamias. I'm all in on them house of macadamias.com slash twist right now for 20% off just for being a listener the nuts are delicious The bars are amazing and of course the dark chocolate dip packs are my favorite house of macadamias.com

SPEAKER_30: Let's take a look at one more chart here and this is critically important. So now we're looking at alphabet. I'm sorry google and facebook's revenue, right? That's your that's your top lines the big green line

SPEAKER_61: 69.69 Billion for google last quarter and then 28.8 billion for last quarter for facebook. Okay, it's a lot of money

SPEAKER_172: Now let's look at the capital expenditures Yeah They're almost at the same for those of you who are not watching. Yeah, we're looking at charts here. Yeah. Yeah

SPEAKER_118: The blue chart the the dark blue

SPEAKER_112: It turns out meta is spending more on capex to make 28 billion They're spending 7.5 on capex And uh google spending but 6.8 billion to make 69 billion

SPEAKER_89: So they're I mean, I this would be as if google if this if google's making 2x more that means google would be spending like 15 billion on capex if these ratios were the same, but they're not in other words, they're more efficient

SPEAKER_23: You know, what's bonkers about this is that we're actually talking about alphabet like we're being snotty here But it is relevant in this case that we're talking about alphabet because alphabet makes hardware Alphabet has multiple divisions alphabet has exactly x and way mo underneath it And is still spending less on capex They've controlled that They have controlled that and meta. I mean, that's where you do really see I think we're talking ourselves out of your day trade by the way because this is a stunning lack of discipline

SPEAKER_61: Which is why you know brad is, you know, I guess probably at his wits end I think you know the next thing is he just he should just take the loss and sell his shares

SPEAKER_214: I think that like this is I think so too. I don't think this letter gets him anywhere

SPEAKER_61: I think I think this is like last call for him. He's like, okay, listen I'm a loyal patron of this restaurant, but if you don't fix the food i'm out, you know You don't have like a restaurant you love And you've been going there for years and then it goes downhill And like you're just like oh the service is terrible now And my food came out cold and at some point you just give up and you're like I used to love that place

SPEAKER_99: But do you tell him or do you just walk though? Like this is where i'm still trying to figure out like what you tell them

SPEAKER_38: If you care you tell the letter about being nice I guess if you're like if you have a relationship and you've been but yes, but you're a regular

SPEAKER_06: It's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a yelp post though. That's the right again There's the private conversation versus the yelp review Like brad just posted a yelp review

SPEAKER_61: I'll do that. That's that's who I am too. I'll do that too. I will tell the manager harsh. Hey, listen I love this restaurant Yeah, my food came out cold the last two times the service has been dismal It took for a long time for it to seat us, you know The drinks came late whatever it is. I would tell the manager I tell the owner if I knew them if I was a regular And then I would i'm in fact, uh, like a bit of a karen If I gave something a four or five star review on yelp And then it sucks like every quarter I get like an email from because I was yelp elite for a little while which makes me feel good

SPEAKER_123: Uh Every now and again, they're like hey rate these restaurants i'm like, you know what? That's my civic duty to do that as a foodie and i'll go rate them and I will change my rating

SPEAKER_61: I will go back and i'll say oh damn edit it and i'll say update this was four stars. It's now three here's why

SPEAKER_15: And it i'm maybe i'm a karen i'm screaming into what's the male version of a karen is it a ken? I don't I think it is such a sexist stupid term anyway, so I don't know I guess it's a ken like

SPEAKER_79: It's a brad just be a karen

SPEAKER_227: Just take the gen you're a brad

SPEAKER_229: Amazing amazing You know what karen could be a gender neutral term you could still be a karen. I think it's general neutral. Yeah

SPEAKER_15: um

SPEAKER_30: Well, you know I have this uh I have this uh dark web signal group date Yeah, I have a dark web signal girl and they are going wild with the brad and zuck memes

SPEAKER_61: You saw that first one With him as adrian brody from billions of clam bake

SPEAKER_233: Succession here's another one that came up. Uh, this is the classic superman Making a decision of what to do. Never it is. Never gets old

SPEAKER_38: We have our two buttons in case here again What's if you're not watching on youtube you probably should be youtube.com slash this weekend

SPEAKER_06: But here we have the classic superman dilemma on the left. We have the shareholder value button On the right. We have personal pet project

SPEAKER_237: And then we have a sweaty suck just stuck doesn't even know what to do Yeah

Chamath Palihapitiya: Or this was my favorite the old kylo ren from the terrible star wars films when he wants more power more power and

SPEAKER_241: It's it's brad gerstner saying more free cash flow more All right

SPEAKER_38: I hope it works, but if not brad just sell just walk away

SPEAKER_82: Speaking of mismanagement

SPEAKER_233: You remember the fire fest, right? That kid's out of jail by the way. I can't wait to see how much money

SPEAKER_28: Andresen horowitz gives him for his next idea

SPEAKER_38: I'm so glad you said it not me. You're already blocked. I'm just unfollowed I'm still skating the line

SPEAKER_89: Yeah, that's the process with mark andresen. He unfollows you that he blocks you. Yeah, but he'll be back He'll be back. I'm convinced. I'll be back fate loves irony

SPEAKER_30: So fire festival was on a an island in the bahamas It was a disaster for those of you who didn't see the two competing documentaries Both documentaries have something to offer. I highly recommend both

SPEAKER_00: But yeah, if you paid thousands of dollars because the kardashian slash jenners told you to do it and they never showed up And they got paid 50 grand or something to tweet this bs They are now taking the island that billy mcfarland christened Uh for his luxury con artist billy mcfarland. I should I mean

SPEAKER_248: So con artist

SPEAKER_157: Billy mcfarland, uh back in 2017. I mean this becoming ancient history now They're gonna make luxury crypto

SPEAKER_15: condo community what I mean, okay, so

SPEAKER_06: Apparently a company called agia international And we really need to do some proper colombo here on whether billy mcfarland is associated with this operation or not Is claiming that it will sell quote 60 ultra luxurious pavilions and villas ranging from a thousand to six and a half thousand square feet On this island. We do not know by the way anything about this company We cannot find anything more than a website But it seems to have It doesn't even seem it is only purchasable Via nft So you can only buy This property it will be the only community quote strictly sold Via nfts according to the website residents will be hatched ten thousand dollars to get on the allow list

SPEAKER_23: And homes are expected to range from one and a half to five million dollars So they've just gone with the the the complete lack of irony that you might expect From the crypto community. They're just repurposing without comment

SPEAKER_06: And in fact even saying yes, you know I don't know that they're bragging about how it's the site of the fire festival But without comment they are repurposing this island Site of the biggest debacle in uh recent

SPEAKER_23: Influencer memory and turning it into Basically like a crypto influencer Island slash

SPEAKER_254: There's nothing sketchy here, but apparently you pay ten thousand dollars for an nft

SPEAKER_30: Just to get on the list get you on the list to buy homes for a couple million bucks

SPEAKER_64: No, all you get there is the right to mint the right to ownership nft Got it. Okay. Yeah

SPEAKER_233: So that couldn't possibly be a grift i've never heard an allow list price. What is it an allow list price? It's like you give me ten thousand dollars and yeah

SPEAKER_41: You give me ten thousand dollars and then I let you it's like a per seat license thing totally That's exactly what it is. It's the right to buy it in the first place

SPEAKER_89: Well, anyway, listen Anyway, don't do this I I would advise people to

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um If you're doing a real estate community and nfts are in any way involved That's a big red flag and then if billy mcfarland

SPEAKER_263: Is involved it's just like every red flag in the world waving at you

SPEAKER_264: We don't know that he is we have no idea

SPEAKER_06: We don't but and we literally have no idea because you can't find anything more than a website and a linkedin page with eight followers

SPEAKER_23: And to employees about this entire company That's showing these incredible renderings of like beautiful houses with infinity pools that are definitely going to be built there

SPEAKER_34: Because nothing has ever gone wrong there before I mean, I don't know man, but okay

SPEAKER_06: It's your 10k. You know what it's your 10k and if it turns out billy mcfarland is behind this I will not be in the slightest bit surprised the the bad news here is

SPEAKER_155: For the people running this grift and it feels like a grift to me. Uh, that's my personal opinion that this would have been

SPEAKER_75: If it is in fact a grip the perfect grift for 2020. No, if this was 20 20 21. Oh, yeah

SPEAKER_233: This grift would have just gone supernova. I mean, they were really good off

SPEAKER_268: Yeah, I mean just everything folks if you're going to do a crypto real estate grift in

SPEAKER_30: 2022 when people's portfolios are down 20 30 40 You might not find too many buyers like they may want to buy amazon or something. Yeah

SPEAKER_00: They may not want to buy your shares and your nft grift but whatever. I mean if it is a grift

Jason Calacanis: I don't know feels grifty to me. You never know you never know But if I was just gonna buy like a really fancy house with an infinity pool on an island Maybe just would want to use money. Yeah

SPEAKER_274: Listen founders very important if you're in sass or you're in services and you store customer data in the cloud

SPEAKER_118: You need to be socked to compliant yesterday and you don't you might be hearing this and you may not even know What sock to is or maybe you heard about it, you know, you're behind the eight ball Let's get this solved today this week I want you to be compliant from a third party so that you can close big deals do it now Do not look like a Dope when you try to close a deal and they're like, do you have sock two and you're like, uh Uh, that long pause that's going to be the sound of them going to your competitor use vanta Which makes it incredibly easy to get and renew your sock to on average vanta customers are stock to compliant In just two to four weeks and compare that to three to five months without vanta And they partner with over two dozen audit firms who have been trained to file sock two reports directly within vanta I was able to invest in vanta. It's a great company A bunch of my portfolio founders have used vanta. They've had amazing experiences. They give it their highest rating and and let's just be clear here If you're not stock to compliant, you can't close major customers. It's that simple It's one of the first things they're going to ask for here's the best part of this ad read vanta loves this week in startups They want to support founders and they want to support founders early and they don't want you to break the bank So they're gonna give you a thousand dollars off. Think about that get one thousand dollars off at vanta.com slash twist v-a-n-t-a.com Slash t-w-a-n-t one thousand dollars off banta.com slash twist get your sock to now. It looks like

SPEAKER_276: There's a divi Holmes hit piece in fast company, uh, we'll have to have a dina come on and talk about it

SPEAKER_00: But I thought we'd I just cue it up And so

SPEAKER_61: This way, you know, I'm i'm almost reticent to go after this story right now because I don't see divi has

SPEAKER_89: responded to it so i guess the question is do we cover it now i don't know it does feel like sort of um

SPEAKER_23: one-sided right it feels one-sided misunderstanding exactly i mean i think the only reason we brought it up is because like it feels really one-sided and like maybe a lady ceo hit piece in disguise and i don't know we like it but yeah maybe we should just wait and see how this shakes out a

SPEAKER_233: little bit before we give it more play yeah i mean because we have access to adina so we can just have her come on tomorrow and talk about it as opposed to all right so let's do this we can leave this in

SPEAKER_118: the show that there was a hit piece on divvy homes and fast company we've read the article we have the

SPEAKER_172: notes but feels hit piece-ish to us in our judgment right we both agree yeah it does actually it's a pretty snotty piece it's got tone yeah it's got a tone and so we'll just make a little bit of uh

SPEAKER_118: we'll call an audible here we will we're aware of the story instead of detailing the story now let's ask adina to come on tomorrow or the next day and uh we'll detail the story and get her response because she's a friend of the pod so nick uh leave this in the show molly and i'm making this decision and then open invite to adina to come on the show in the next day or two or send us some notes and then we'll cover it then when we get her side we'll make it it's like being uh

SPEAKER_123: editorially fair yeah which the story doesn't feel it doesn't no it does not it does not feel this is

SPEAKER_61: the thing when you have one bad customer review and then a journalist decides to make that the focus of

SPEAKER_15: a piece i always find that quite unfair or even a hundred right like that's it's in terms of scale right depends on the denominator right 100 out of the denominator exactly it means nothing 100 out

SPEAKER_61: of 500 means something one in five right so there is some point at which a bad review counts so

SPEAKER_297: yeah right or number of bad reviews it's not this doesn't feel like this had a very like

SPEAKER_298: i don't know it had a very cannon fodder feel to it i did not i did not care for the tone personally

SPEAKER_61: felt like a hit piece and like movies and we are uh we believe i i speak for molly on this behalf because we've both discussed it here we believe collectively that women are getting hit pieces on a startup founder who are female are getting hit with this bs harder than men are the bar for a hit piece for a woman is like i told somebody to do their job

SPEAKER_23: i'm like that i'm paying them for and it's never accompanied by i mean listen this is and we will talk about this it's a hard business to be in the human elements are real and when things go wrong they can go very wrong and and that can be a big bill attached and a very disruptive situation for the humans involved right like it's tough business because it's people's homes because it's people's homes and also once you're as soon as you get to the part in the story and i was just waiting for it line by line where you bring up the founder by name and you talk about how she likes to use her history and you make a little side swipe at her ivy league education then it's just like okay here we

SPEAKER_89: are here it is here it is yes here it is it got personal it gets personal that is like a huge tell

SPEAKER_61: that the person who wrote it maybe has some issue with the person now uh yeah that that is actually

SPEAKER_23: but it's just like there it is right like if you like i just want to go but i even started this morning and of course ran out of time because we had a show to do to look through all the facts or the fast company like archives recent stories like show me a story that's just a hit piece on a company and its business model that doesn't have this kind of like personal mm-hmm yes like as soon as it does i know that there's a woman ceo involved and i'm it's not to say that women ceos can't screw up

SPEAKER_44: but it's just again the cadence of the hit piece on the lady ceo is like about every you know

Chamath Palihapitiya: 10 to 18 months you know the next thing is going to be you can always tell like and they're like oh and

SPEAKER_61: she has her nanny uh she has her two nannies with their baby at the office and set up a playroom for a kid at the office and it's like yeah because she's a mom and she's taking care of the kid and she's got means to have a nanny and the dad you know i go to work i have of course there's nannies here

SPEAKER_325: taking care of my kids when i'm at work what do you think i'm doing throw them in the backyard

SPEAKER_327: but nobody would ever say like oh venture capitals jason calican has brought his nanny with

SPEAKER_325: him to a speaking gig you know like when i go to a speaking gig and i bring my kids or you know or

SPEAKER_61: something i'm at an event with my kids yes there's two nannies with us three kids two nannies yes yeah okay i have some amount of means as a ceo founder yes and i'm not carrying my kids with me but i i might bring a nanny but a woman brings a nanny oh that's got to be in the story that's part of the

SPEAKER_15: hit piece you know it's just a double standard it's a bs double standard it just is and this is a

SPEAKER_10: really and because this is such a snarky piece like snarky right it's like that you can't that that frankly we'd just rather have a conversation with her go straight to the source and say yeah i

SPEAKER_171: mean i this reminds me of the away ceo one where she gave it does it has that same tone where it's

SPEAKER_325: just like tone is the away piece yeah yeah and then in the away piece they're like she's white and the people who are in the this industry you know in this group were people of color and it's just like what are we even talking about here like what does that have to do with anything like she she's she said to the people who are working in the department that does customer support to work

SPEAKER_61: harder during christmas because that's when we sell most of our stuff like everybody gives that

David Friedberg: speech hey let's go everybody you know amazon gives that speech bezos gave that speech countless times hey it's go time it's black friday it's cyber monday let's go team even like we're not here

SPEAKER_10: for work-life balance it's go time this is our business right like all of that is just within the

SPEAKER_34: it's just like it's so yeah it's like i mean cloaked claims it ends with like divvy is happy to be your landlord indefinitely i'm sorry what like it's not it's it's i think they're happy to have you as a

SPEAKER_339: customer either way if you buy the home or your landlord yeah it's a hippie yeah it's a hippies um you

SPEAKER_123: know i i tell people straight up you've been in the meetings hey if you're gonna work for me in an investment company fixed 50 solid 60 i'm referring to the hours per week why do i say that i literally we had a rough side i was wearing the culture i was like listen don't work here if you're not willing to answer the phone if a founder calls on saturday night at 10 pm and get out of the movies and go handle that situation that's what we do yeah so we do it's not it's not a nine to five

SPEAKER_79: you know the end don't work here yep yeah and i don't know i don't see you getting dragged in fast company is that right me for saying that yeah i don't see you getting like finance literally

SPEAKER_23: compared she is compared in this piece back to back with predatory lending contract purveyors in chicago who stripped black families of three to four billion dollars in household wealth during the 1950s

SPEAKER_10: and 1960s i mean like literally it's like it's like so habits and her co-founders are doing this and before that there was this thing yeah so same same right i mean

SPEAKER_89: and before i asked people to work 50 60 hours a week the great pharaohs in egypt demanded that people

SPEAKER_356: carry stones on their backs up to the pyramids you know for 80 hours a week seven days a week j cal

SPEAKER_358: just like jay cal jay cal and the pharaohs who built the pyramids and forced them modern day pharaoh

SPEAKER_361: yes it's very it's super analogous right like literally like the 90s i mean they really that's

SPEAKER_13: a deep pull take concerns take yeah have all the concern you want with the rent-to-own mod right like

SPEAKER_06: it's like it's you can you can write a piece that's like is this the right way to incentivize homeownership and is homeownership such a goal that they're right none of that is this is not that this is

SPEAKER_367: not that piece this is jay cal is just like the pharaohs i love i love this sentence which by

SPEAKER_86: the way advocates you know just advocates i like how he said we weren't going to talk about the story

SPEAKER_325: but it is that freaking egregious that we cannot stop however i mean it's this is the world we live in right now there's a group of people who are doing real i mean i defended this on all in when people were like journalism dad i'm like no no no no there's just content creation and journalism sitting next to each other and there are people doing unbelievable journalism yes there are important groups at the boston globe the new york i love how he was like you can look up any event

SPEAKER_38: he's like you can look up any event that happened in the world i'm like where do you think you're

SPEAKER_325: going to find the story about that event like come on journalism is alive and well and there are incredible moments of journalism happening every day every minute people deserve pulitzers they deserve raises they're doing investigative piece there are independent journalists doing sub stacks that are

SPEAKER_123: crushing it amazing amazing but also next to it as you always say and and and there's content creation and then there's content creators who are compensated based on clicks traffic and followers

SPEAKER_325: in fact when i was looking for a co-host to join me here molly one of the reasons you were on the top of the list was not just how good you are at your job it was that at the time you had a hundred thousand followers on twitter and i said to myself well if i'm gonna bring somebody in here it would be nice if when they tweeted about the show or that were doing something that maybe somebody would show up in other words they had a following right okay when you hire the rock to play black adam just a little bit of a callback you do that in the dc universe because you know you're going to bring a group of people to the dc universe who might not have been there before exactly this is a specific play

SPEAKER_61: they made they wanted a mass audience who watched fast and furious because he's part of that franchise

SPEAKER_325: correct yeah bro hello okay i've never seen one i've never seen any fast and furious you haven't even

SPEAKER_07: seen the awesome spin-off hobs and shaw the most fun movie ever i've never seen any of these okay i'm

SPEAKER_325: derailing so anyway i know that he's involved in that and i was talking to is it michelle rodriguez who's in that yeah okay so i know michelle rodriguez it's like there's only one 14 year old boy on this show okay well anyway i know michelle rodriguez a friend of a friend and i've had dinner with her

SPEAKER_61: and and and i sat and had a long conversation with her about the fast and furious uh and she said to me jay cow this is the most international movie franchise in history chinese people

SPEAKER_385: korean people african people european south americans blacks whites everybody in between

SPEAKER_123: has some representation in this and they're drawn to it it's never happened before this is you know

SPEAKER_118: because if it's an ensemble piece she explained to me you know you're bringing in all these different

SPEAKER_172: like superheroes but he said in tokyo that everybody wants to okay great tokyo drift okay yeah so there

SPEAKER_123: was some conscientious effort for uh dare i say inclusion in that franchise that brought everybody in

SPEAKER_15: that's what they're doing with the rock right you're bringing in to have more people in the big tent they even call it it's a big tent strategy that's literally what it's called anyway yeah yeah and so

SPEAKER_385: you know but this is also when they when they have the advocates they bundle together a group of

SPEAKER_123: people's opinions but without people's names this is when like the content creators as opposed to journalism it's a little bit lazy right like if you really want to go for advocates like just give us five different people's names name name three i think for me i always told my people bring me three if you if you you know just so it's not like you cherry picked give me three so if there were problems at least three people who had the problem and if there are people who have an opinion on

SPEAKER_15: this let's get three people on record and no no i never like these anonymous name and study

SPEAKER_23: name is to i have had many editors i have literally had editors be like if you're starting your

SPEAKER_398: sentence with experts say start over and that's what this expert yeah right so the point

SPEAKER_325: being like people are now hiring it's lazy on like black adam hiring you know dc universe bringing

SPEAKER_61: in the rock that's part of journalism now it's like these super these super journalists who have big followings how do you get a big following well we all know how you get a following on twitter uh it's

SPEAKER_233: by picking a side right joining a tribe like this is kind of like the playbook and i feel like this is a little tribal like you know well beating up on tech is a hundred percent of playbook too right it's

SPEAKER_34: like yeah sure find the find the thing that and and again this is why i brought up that housing

SPEAKER_23: touches a lot it presses a lot of buttons right because it does get to inequality and it does get to there is there has been a history of predatory lending and the rent to own model has had a lot of scrutiny and there is so there are so many ways to do that story that do not feel this uh snotty i mean

SPEAKER_06: i know i keep coming back to that word but that's the tone here it's like borderline matters yeah

SPEAKER_86: it matters it does not feel no come on not in the slightest listen to this sentence advocates caution

SPEAKER_00: that modern implementations of rent-to-own models have the potential to be just as exploitive as past

SPEAKER_61: incarnations i mean that's a lot of word salad to say nothing okay you're saying rent-to-own models past

SPEAKER_325: and period the new ones could be just as exploitive as old exploitive ones or said another way they could be different and not be exploitive right exactly or not so i could say advocates and experts say that modern implementations of rent-to-own models could be better and solve the problems of past

SPEAKER_118: incarnations you literally could say the same thing you could talk to advocates for this

SPEAKER_123: and say yeah this could be better yeah but that doesn't help anybody to just put in a biased sentence like that advocates caution what does it even mean which advocate like if you and i were editing this piece yeah big red pen i'd be like give me a study show me a study sure like studies are

SPEAKER_118: good and studies are not perfect either but you're trying to triangulate on the truth and word salad

SPEAKER_23: does not get you any closer to the truth yeah there could be real problems again there could be real

SPEAKER_34: problems but there is not a lot of proof in here there are stories about their outlier stories about things that went wrong and there are always things that go wrong in a company but as soon as you're like in other words they're happy to be your landlord forever and so on and so forth right particularly galled by divvy's attempts to shirk responsibility in the name of like it's just like

SPEAKER_233: okay okay anyway in breaking news we don't advocates caution that people working for jason

SPEAKER_61: kalakanish should work no more than 40 hours a week so that our returns can be industry standard

SPEAKER_267: and no better i guess do question that

SPEAKER_06: advocates for doing just fine and no better yeah yeah anyway so adina please come on yeah i mean

SPEAKER_61: it will come on i'm sure i mean also like i i believe her when she said she wanted to help this group of people we've had her on the pod multiple times and then she spoke at all in summit like there's a group of people who can almost own a home and they might want to right you know select the home buy it with the help of divvy like that's the group we're talking about here now is it possible that some of them maybe overreach sure what's the harm they pay a little extra there's real harm and they

SPEAKER_06: overreach and right it's like i don't and divvy's on the hook and it's not necessarily adina's fault personally and nor does it more like when like i just looked up five stories about black rock buying a bunch of single family homes nobody's named here nobody's parent nobody's origin story is named here there's no like around the time that larry fink at black rock decided that the total addressable

SPEAKER_23: market for single family homes that can be rented out at an exploitative price right like he's not in here by name and black rock is taking millions of homes off of the market every year i mean look at this

SPEAKER_00: weird sentence in this story this is from catherine bracy co-founder and ceo of non-profit advocacy group tech equity collaborative i'm sure she's got great intent but this is the quote i'm trying to understand this sentence too the real danger is that the incentive structure around venture capital

SPEAKER_61: supercharges these models and then the people who are building the companies don't have the historical context to understand when they may be replicating something that has created harm in the past so they're saying adina who went to an ivy league education spent years building this business

SPEAKER_325: does it own the history doesn't know the history of rent to own is that what there's is that what she's saying here because i i've met adina i've spent time with her she's brilliant and you you're sure that she has studied this she might be one of the biggest experts in the world today on rent to own and you can be sure the venture capital is giving her funding i mean she's raised she's a unicorn company

SPEAKER_118: you can be sure they understand the history of this and they've studied it and they've modeled it

SPEAKER_437: so it's kind of the opposite of what this person is saying right one of course they put the may in there

Jason Calacanis: right she's got that she's got that master's in business from stanford and listen again maybe not

SPEAKER_06: right like maybe not maybe there is some universe and we should always allow for the possibility in order

SPEAKER_23: to be as gender neutral and objective as possible that maybe she doesn't know the history but there's no sign in this article that she's been asked directly and the assumption throughout is that she is essentially on equal footing she personally and i want to make this clear right they're not saying the company the assumption throughout this article is that adina personally is very likely on the same level as all those predatory lenders in chicago in the 50s and 60s don't print until you have her i'm sorry

SPEAKER_446: yeah i mean and maybe talk to this is so lazy because there's a really easy thing to do here

SPEAKER_61: uh this is my note as an editor because i was an editor in chief and publisher started my own magazine started countless blogs including a gadget autoblog joysticks like very famous blogs in their industry i would just say to somebody get me three other own give me three other divi owners go on a reddit some forum go on craigslist tweet does anybody know anybody divi go find me more divi owners and let's talk to you say to the company hey can you put us in touch with three owners we'd like to talk to them i mean that's another way to go you just basically spend one more day i would say one more day on the story get me other owners of divi homes but you know a lot of journalists molly have to file

SPEAKER_449: daily or every two days yeah or twice a day and so this precludes them from doing work uh and that's

SPEAKER_419: part of the problem this is under the long read tag so presumably there was more time

Jason Calacanis: so then if you didn't spend the time what would that tell you it basically yeah that you want to get it out and you want to get a bunch of clicks for your hit pace like at this point because there is such a long history of pieces like this being aimed quite particularly at women ceos my name

SPEAKER_23: and having the same kind of just like a little over the top tone dramatic i'm to the point where i no longer take it seriously like i'm just like yeah i i actually don't believe you you have created such a culture of bad journalism that now when i read this piece i don't believe you i just reflexively believe adina here because your tone is that not objective and your history is so poor and i mean this as the general you the general journalism you not this writer in particular yeah anyway anyway all right

SPEAKER_321: i think that's enough show for today that's enough show for today i know shake it off shake it off well

SPEAKER_61: i yeah i mean it's a little bit frustrating but it is what it is i think just whenever you're reading

SPEAKER_28: these stories we're just trying to give people a little education on how to understand if you should

SPEAKER_61: believe what you're reading yes anonymous sources experts say you know this sort of bombastic stuff

SPEAKER_00: personally attacking the founder when you start seeing those things you got to wonder about the agenda of the piece now you used to we used to live in a world where we didn't worry about agendas right

SPEAKER_23: yeah totally but now we worry that and we don't even worry it's true there was like a paul graham tweet the other day that was citing some data about headlines over the past like 30 years and showing that they have gotten quite notably like empirically more uh outrageous and angering and i mean we really are i was looking up the history of yellow journalism and the law you know the there was that whole journalism trend in the 1800s that led to all the libel and slander laws that we have today because the goal of journalism at that time was to inflame and enrage and there were even those who suggested that it like contributed to america getting involved in a war and i can't remember which one but it was literally like i mean it was it felt like a mirror of this moment right it was like the march toward war anyway um yes headlines suggesting fear anger disgust and sadness and and this is that type of story where it's like if you read this and you find yourself getting mad and horrified and outraged and thinking to yourself like oh my god adina heffitz is a predatory lender just like chicago in the 50s and 60s there's a reason you feel that way yeah it's the writing

SPEAKER_89: they literally used every device possible to make you feel that way they these experts and advocates told you to feel that way because they're experts and advocates and you know these are just little journalism tricks the spanish-american war ah yeah and well and remember why were they doing this

SPEAKER_00: kind of outrageous headlines back then there were political agendas of course and they also wanted to sell papers you know if you walk by a paper you see an outrageous headline you're like okay i'll give a nickel to read the story on page six about that okay i'll jump ahead and try to read the story and if you pick up the newspaper and you go to page six and you start reading the purchase says hey you

SPEAKER_61: can't read here this is on the library give me the nickel right yeah like kind of famous scene it's

SPEAKER_124: the same thing here give me the click i want the click i want the eyeballs i need your attention and

Jason Calacanis: this is a crazy headline i know there were two major newspapers and the publishers were joseph pulitzer and william randolph hurst yeah and the competition between the two were so fierce

SPEAKER_23: i went and looked this up because i was like this is not the most polarized that um the media has ever been but yeah uh i came across the story where it was like this extremely sensationalist style and the profit-driven coverage of world events got so intense that it arguably in part led to america's

SPEAKER_82: involvement in the spanish-american war yeah it's a good poll well and then this is why podcasting is

SPEAKER_489: what a nerd i am well podcasting if you look at history yes it would actually i've actually i've read a book on the history of journalism um no here's the thing um i'm going to take my retainer out for

SPEAKER_00: this i think this is part of why podcasting is surging as a way for people to get the news source because it's nice to listen to stuff right and then you build a relationship with people you trust you get to know them and people say okay molly was a journalist jason was a journalist okay they

SPEAKER_61: invest in companies they got a good 360 degree view from all sides of the table that you know jake house built companies molly's investing in companies she's been a journalist okay like maybe when they break something down i'll get more out of that than i will just from a journalist or just from a venture capitalist doing a post or just from an expert doing a post you kind of can find people who have a range of experiences get into a rhythm with them trust them and that's what i encourage people to do you find some sources in podcasting you feel you can trust and then that

SPEAKER_118: becomes like part of your editorial mix i'm not saying the only thing yep but part of it you know yeah but it could be a nice piece of it that you know you can then build off of it and i think this is why you're seeing this surging uh uh level of interest in podcasters and podcasting because a certain person molly works as a podcaster i think you have to have an intellectual honesty to build that trust you have to be willing to be wrong right sometimes we're wrong about things yes and you have to have some broad experience that people say you know what i'm listening to this

SPEAKER_00: person's voice i get it they know what they're talking about okay molly's invested in companies now she's been at the new york times she's been at npr whatever marketplace you know uh public radio

SPEAKER_276: you know you you collect some uh experience in life and then this is this is the unique

SPEAKER_06: thing about podcasting and you have time it is you have time and honestly you have the ability you are rewarded for critical thinking like it shouldn't be if anything i think it should you should consider it this is i apologies to all of my former employers you should consider it a greater cadet credential that i left those places that like at some point the commitment to critical thinking

SPEAKER_23: overrides what your editors want you to do and i think you see journalists leave for those reasons and and there's sort of a certain code for people who have left various places and it usually said i want it's usually breaks down to i wanted to be smarter than this

SPEAKER_10: because journalism is mass by definition and a mass audience

SPEAKER_23: usually doesn't usually wants to get mad about stuff they want to get mad they want to get sad they want to be entertained sex does sell if it bleeds it leads like all of that is just true about any mass medium yeah and we have you know we get to we have this like beautiful opportunity to cultivate smaller smarter slices yeah you can be more thoughtful i like this sort of thing

SPEAKER_61: you can be more thoughtful and you're rewarded for critical thinking as opposed to penalized for it because uh you know and this is where i think journalism has a a structural problem if you were to write a

SPEAKER_118: headline here uh divvy homes is attempting to make a better rent to own model would not be clicked on and it would not release the dopamine of the outrage that you get from this piece right so the person who wrote a more accurate headline or a more accurate story or a fairer story would not get people as charged up now when people get charged up what do they do they retweet you so this is a very like nuanced point there's no reason to retweet an insightful thoughtful critical thinking piece it's not like if if you heard our discussion here and you're like well that was thoughtful your first point isn't i need to retweet that thoughtfulness wow that molly has really broke that

David Friedberg: down with some critical thinking now if we were upset and angry oh my lord here we go this is

SPEAKER_123: retreatable it's a it's a fight it's an argument i have to pick a side i'm a republican i'm a democrat i'm i'm you know whatever a coastal elite i'm a redneck whatever it is you feel your tribe's been wronged yeah you get that retweet action what does that do it increases audience so you also get content

SPEAKER_79: you get to create content and potentially get attention for it and to francis's point like

SPEAKER_13: i i think we're trying i agreed that in some ways we are being just i i agree with you i am being

SPEAKER_23: dismissive of the serious issues in this piece because this piece is written in a way that makes me want to be mad about the serious issues in this piece yes instead of laying them out in a in a reasoned way with enough expertise behind them with a with a fair treatment of the founder that i believe that i have engaged right because again i have acknowledged over and over in this conversation

SPEAKER_06: this could be true sure but because of the way it is presented to me because it's like what could possibly go wrong silicon valley owns the american dream i'm already i'm on my heels i am defensive because this does not feel fair right but you're thinking you're now you've gotten to

SPEAKER_61: this metacognition level and anybody who spent time in the media machine has this where you're like okay

SPEAKER_118: what happened in the star chamber when they were discussing the headline who wrote the headline did the author write the headline in the subhead probably not who wrote it and the social media group who's really good at this stuff and then what was the editor thinking the editor might be

SPEAKER_61: thinking hmm we get compensated based on our pages we're behind business insider business insiders writing crazy headlines every day they're writing crazy headline pieces and trying to get your subscriber for 99 cents so that you then get bill 10 bucks a month you know their game right they're like let's write something outrageous about these 20 people make a listicle of 20 people get people outraged and get them to subscribe because they can't get it anywhere else put it behind the paywall like there's all these games being played and once you've been inside the machine you just see them and so hopefully the audience here we've helped you see when a piece feels biased again to molly's

SPEAKER_86: point could be true right but we all but jcal and i know what it looks like yeah when right like we

SPEAKER_23: know what it looks like when something is designed to get a specific response this is our specific

SPEAKER_86: expertise as former journalists and media purveyors and this is that kind of piece it's totally that kind

SPEAKER_118: of piece and it could be changed so easily all you had to do is talk to two people who love their divvy homes yeah talk to somebody who actually was an expert on predatory loans yeah who actually could

SPEAKER_123: explain to you the contracts that people signed in those predatory loans and then pulled out the paperwork and the document that adina makes people sign for divvy compared those two and then asked adina about those specific changes so that would be the way i would do it i would find the contract that people in the 50 60 signed that was predatory that contract exists somewhere on the internet we

SPEAKER_118: probably would find in five minutes and i'm sure adina's contract with homeowners is available either publicly or this disgruntled homeowner would have given it to you and then you could just pull it up

SPEAKER_61: and say well this person knew that they're responsible for making sure that you know the

Jason Calacanis: stuff in the house is replaced you know right or whatever and talk to the inspectors and have right exactly like we also know what it would have looked like if it had done right been done right and that's

SPEAKER_00: why we're fired up about this right now yeah but anyway we'll have adina on and uh all right it's a big week this week so thanks for tuning in earning season is coming so we got google microsoft spotify

SPEAKER_61: reporting tomorrow and i am a shareholder in google and i think i j traded microsoft as well so i have

SPEAKER_333: google and microsoft in my portfolio so i'm excited to see what this i don't know if i have good to have

SPEAKER_00: some alphabet i will find out i definitely have some microsoft yeah i mean i i added netflix and uh yeah but i i was thinking about buying microsoft because of the netflix so that would be a pair trade there and i haven't bought spotify yet i'm a little concerned about spotify but maybe this would be a good chance for me to think about those and uh do a little about my portfolio is coming back the gain and loss has uh trimmed it was a little dark there during the the real uh down market but i'm only down 10 right now which i am fine with being down 10 or 11 because i'm building this for a 10 year my biggest gain right now is adobe my biggest loss is disney that and on a cash basis not a percent basis so what's so much disney but i still feel pretty good about disney i'm actually thinking about

SPEAKER_470: buying more disney what are we gonna do about that warner brothers what are we gonna do with

SPEAKER_214: that oh taiwan semiconductor ouch i might buy more yeah yeah well they taught you that's uh that's the headwinds of the uh global chip i mean they're gonna get invaded so that can be a problem it could

SPEAKER_34: be a little bit of a problem yeah i i come on this show and i keep it together and then i go back to my life and it's all uk prime minister and and she take over of china like all the time that's like

SPEAKER_23: these are my two if you if my twitter algorithm could talk right now it would be like wow

SPEAKER_27: this lady is only interested in international news let me ask you a question molly um in our lifetime

SPEAKER_276: yeah yeah uh has uh there been a nuclear war no no has it been a nuclear war since we uh dropped the bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki i'm not talking about nuclear war but where did this come from but

SPEAKER_172: no i'm just putting it out there as just a general statement it has not happened i don't think it's gonna

SPEAKER_276: happen and uh has china invaded another country in our lifetime i don't believe so and that hong kong

SPEAKER_89: was given back to them by the british but that was not an invasion you're so you're going with china

SPEAKER_172: is not going to invade taiwan i don't believe so i don't believe so all right i i i i no i'm not

SPEAKER_112: saying it's not possible but i don't think it's probable and i think the probable case in the world

SPEAKER_61: is that cooler heads prevail that the world tips towards uh less wars and more uh congeniality between nations i believe that trend continues even if right now we are in acute state where it doesn't feel like that because i'm looking at the multi-decade trend of peace in the world uh and uh cooler heads prevailing and things being resolved i think ukraine gets resolved i don't think china invades ukraine

SPEAKER_118: invades um taiwan uh and i think the world bends towards justice and and calm and resiliency so i think this is like a dark moment in the world where people are realizing how resiliency doesn't exist in the system and then correcting that and covet plus this crisis and this war and some dictator bad behavior

SPEAKER_00: it just makes everything feel chaotic and that i think think these things resolve themselves relatively quickly in fact the the resiliency that this ukraine war is going to create the system and the resiliency that'll be get created in the system because of the pandemic is going to make the world more stable and so europe will be less dependent on foreign uh on on dictator oil the us and the rest of the world will be less dependent on uh pharmaceuticals ppe and chips from dictatorships uh and that will in fact make the world more stable long term because then when we have discussions with dictators or other countries like that you you don't you're not as dependent on them right so

SPEAKER_157: i feel this is like a lot of short-term pain for an extraordinary long-term game i'm super positive you know that

Jason Calacanis: i do yeah i think we have just a different interestingly like uh philosophical take on time

SPEAKER_23: like i think time is a wheel and i just think these things reoccur yes and that's sort of the nature of things and there's not a like a i don't think we're in a storyline that progresses to an ending happy or otherwise does that make sense like i just think agree these things reoccur in life and then on top of that honestly like that didn't you see that video of china literally of the cooler head being escorted right out of the meeting like yeah i don't know who knows i think we don't know the fallacy isn't in assuming that the logical progression is the same in different cultures and of course

SPEAKER_559: people there could be black swan events of course and there could be but see here's what i think about

SPEAKER_23: the wheel china's like we're gonna do china 2025 and then they direct all the resources of the country there and then we're gonna like build all these miles of rail we're gonna do that and then we're gonna do this and then they do it and they direct all of the resources of the country and she has more power in the world than any single human and just stood there and was like we're gonna get back taiwan we're not ruling anything out we're not taking anything off the table in terms of reunification

SPEAKER_61: it is happening and if they do it and they lose trade partners and those factories go dark they'll have a revolution because nobody will have work to do and so these are the other balancing things that

SPEAKER_07: they just shut down the whole country because of covid zero like to for covid zero but they just did all that to themselves and have had no revolution and have disappeared millions of people

SPEAKER_61: again yeah that's true but imagine if iphones and semiconductors are no longer made in china and they're made in korea vietnam and other places and they don't have this influx of money coming in and their factories are not churning out products which i think is kind of what's happening in this

SPEAKER_118: as the wheel spins is that people are saying you know what yeah it's a little crazy over there the dictatorship's a little crazy and as the dictators go a little crazy people will say you know what i have to disconnect from the dictator and then all of a sudden it looks more like north

SPEAKER_00: korea than a vibrant economic trade partner of china i'm saying russia they do not germans

Jason Calacanis: were building pipelines with them i'm saying they 100 like she does not care about that

SPEAKER_61: but i think the mistake is in assuming that he cares about that and if he doesn't he becomes north korea and then the people take him out of power so that's but i see i think here's the thing about the wheel i think the wheel is trending upwards towards a better life for all humanity i feel

SPEAKER_00: like as the wheel spins yes these things happen but i feel like the the gains in technology and democracy accrue to individuals who are living more longer than ever and less people are living out of poverty

SPEAKER_565: than ever and uh justice is that's true yeah i didn't i didn't i don't i don't dispute any of that yeah i also think we would be silly to assume that history will not repeat itself it always has before

SPEAKER_23: it always has and societies throughout history by the way have had like a massively increased uh quality of living and then collapsed i'm not even trying to be a bummer here it's just more like i feel sort of buddhist about it it's like i don't know this is this is now like i think they'll always be

SPEAKER_00: instability but i do feel like the i'm in the stephen pinker camp that things are getting so

SPEAKER_61: much better that we don't appreciate them so while the conflict in ukraine feels horrible it's not

SPEAKER_00: comparable to world war ii or world war one you know etc etc but anyway yeah anyway we everybody

SPEAKER_301: happy monday everybody happy monday everybody we've got all the feelings here we got all the feelings i don't know i don't have any feelings about the round table this wednesday too i'm excited about that

Jason Calacanis: yeah it's gonna be a it's just remain please ask him about the island you know i won't be here on wednesday so i will not get to be part of the crypto round table with you that's all right but i look forward to listening to it as a fan anyway all that's coming up and those earnings and much more philosophical musings about the state of the world see you all tomorrow bye bye