SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, I am back from Art Basel in Miami, NFT Basel, and I have a ton of fun stories about meeting people, interviewing Cathie Wood. I had a Larry David moment with the CEO of Jewel, the vapor company. I had to do an apology for that. You're going to get to hear one of the first and only apologies here on This Week in Startups. And then I'm going to break down how to lay people off and how not to. And the absolute dereliction of duty by what I'll say is the worst CEO of the year for 2021. I hate to give my predictions now, but he's certainly in the running. The CEO of better.com lit up 900 people on an absolutely deranged zoom call. And apparently he's got a track record of treating people horribly. Today's show is me talking about leadership, what I've learned and how to treat people, which hopefully I've gotten better and better out of my career

SPEAKER_01: and just what an absolute terrible leader the CEO of better is. We're going to break it down in detail on today's episode of This Week in Startups. Stick with us.

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SPEAKER_06: This Week in Startups. Your boy, J-Cal, is back from NFT Basel, which is a conference based upon Art

SPEAKER_00: Basel, which is where rich old people go to buy young people's incredibly expensive art, but has now been

David Friedberg: co-opted by the crypto space. Imagine the coolest party in New York City in 1984. And Andy Warhol and Basquiat and Sting, just everybody cool in the world, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, and David Bowie are hanging out looking at art. And then the most annoying group of nerds come in and start telling you about how the decentralized imaginary money is going to change everything. It was literally like that. But it was a fun time, I have to say, and I'm coming around to aspects of the crypto space. But I've got anecdotes from my four days in Miami. It was great to get out. I was a little panicked about going, but I was able to hop a ride with a friend. So that lowered my concerns about getting the Omicron. I'm going to have a hard time because everybody kept calling it Omicron. And that's stuck in my head. It's Omicron. But obviously, it seems like that isn't as much of a concern. And knock on wood, I took my COVID tests. I did not get COVID while I was there. I only went outside. My personal belief is that COVID spreads most on indoor spaces. And you just stay out of indoor spaces. So I didn't do any indoor spaces, bunch of art outside restaurants, I sit outside, I don't sit inside in restaurants anymore. When you know, it's a large crowd of people. And then I think when people are talking a lot. So that's why I think we don't see these huge spreads on planes, we see the spreading at

Chamath Palihapitiya: churches, home parties, places, and even in quiet places like movie there. So that's my

David Friedberg: personal belief. I didn't get it. But I'm minded, I have a number of crazy at Art Basel slash crypto, I went down there. Because I was speaking at the pre money event. And I was supposed to be interviewed with Adrian Grenier by Eric Newcomer. The people who are running this conference, they literally changed the entire schedule without telling me the night before whatever. So they were like, we don't have anybody interview Kathy Wood, would you do that? And I'm like, Oh, my God, that requires getting up really early. And I'd rather be interviewed with my friend, Adrian Grenier name drop, then they changed the literal schedule. They don't tell me and I'm like, wait, I'm not being interviewed anymore. And I'm interviewing Kathy Wood. And I'm like, guys, what's going on here? And

Chamath Palihapitiya: they're like, Ah, yes, we had some changes. And I'm like, I want to tell the people who are the speakers who are impacted. Like, what if I didn't show up or whatever? Anyway, putting it all

SPEAKER_00: outside. I'm no prima donna, I rolled the punches. And I interviewed Kathy Wood turned out she was a great, great interview. I can't wait to have her on the show. She said she'd come on the show. And she is brilliant. Kathy Wood is very smart. She is also fearless. And we'll talk about any subject. I don't know if anybody has a copy of my interview with Kathy Wood, if you were in the audience, and you did it covertly. Can you please send it to me Jason at calacanis.com or email producers at this week and start up calm, we will not rat you out for covertly doing it, we will thank you. And I will send you

SPEAKER_16: an ember mug, or my favorite anchor battery pack, or give you a shout out, you know, like retweet your company or something. I'll, I'll owe you a favor. If somebody happens to have this video, I

SPEAKER_00: don't know if the 500 startups people have it, or now they're called 500 global. But speaking of

SPEAKER_18: cool, kid walks up to me at a party. Hey, how you doing? I was with a couple of high profile, my friends say, Hey, what do you do? He says, Oh, my name is Mike. You're an artist, he makes NFTS. I was like, Oh, that's great. What kind of NFTS? You made a pop culture. I said, Oh, that's great. You know, good luck. Have you had any of these? And, you know, have you sold any? How's it guys? Yeah, you know, I sold a big one. You know, and I said, Oh, that's very cool. Like, what was it? And it was

David Friedberg: people. And so I hung out with people. I hung out with them two nights, because we had such a good time hanging out one night, we hung out the other night, really great guy, super creative, super fun. And that was a blast. And it's just great to see somebody he's from Wisconsin. He's like a salt of the earth, cool guy, you know, kind of nerdy, but very funny, very engaging. And we had a good

SPEAKER_12: time. So shout out to my new friend, Mike people, I'm gonna have him on the show to great artists,

David Friedberg: great fun. And then I went on a boat, I hung out with my friend David Sachs on a boat, had a little bit of another lap. I had a couple of Larry David moments, if I'm being honest, they asked me like, Can we get you some champagne? And I said, Is it Vaux Clicquot? And the woman's like, Does it matter? I was like, to me? Like, they come back, it is Vaux Clicquot. I don't

Chamath Palihapitiya: like drink people know that. But I do like Vaux Clicquot. For some reason, it's got like a very dry taste. I kind of like it. It's almost like a kombucha to me. And so I drink far too

SPEAKER_16: much Vaux Clicquot this weekend. And I don't I never drink it. I must have had five or six Vaux Clicquots a day. And I think they sponsored the event. But anyway, I

David Friedberg: haven't had a couple of these Vaux Clicquots. I was introduced to somebody and I had a I had a very socially awkward moment. As you know, I do the news every day on this

SPEAKER_18: program. And I read a lot. And so I meet somebody and say, Oh, hey, you know, Jake,

SPEAKER_23: what's up? You know, we're talking and podcast, blah, blah, blah. What do you do? Well, I'm the CEO of jewel to see of jewel. But the jewel, the news. Yeah, like the vaporized jewel. I said, You're the CEO of jewel. And you guys know, I always had I'm pretty

SPEAKER_24: candid. And it could have been the Vove. I'm blaming it on the Vove. But I just

SPEAKER_23: said to him, Can I ask you a question? Unfortunately, he's with his wife. So this is really awkward. But I said, How do you sleep at night? Looked at me like I was

SPEAKER_25: crazy. And I, I said, like, you guys are making like pina colada flavors, and you're marketing this to children. And like a whole generation that was not interested in smoking is now pounding these jewels. Like, how do you sleep at

SPEAKER_00: night? And the guy says, Well, I was brought in to save the company. I've only been there for two years. And you know, we don't make you know, a lot of flavor is that you don't make you know, a lot of flavor. He said, he's

SPEAKER_29: like, we've never made pina colada. Okay, I was just using an example, pina colada, you, you made like 20 different flavors. So yeah, we make

SPEAKER_25: like made like 20 different flavors. I was like, and you marketed to kids. And they said, we don't market it to kids. I said, No, I've read the story. I've talked about it on my podcast. I've seen the ads of young people who look like they're in a Benetton ad, all of the different diversity that's beautiful in the world. Five or six different young people with blueberry and whatever flavors you have. And the wife is increasingly upset. This guy seems like he's been through

SPEAKER_31: it before. And I, I said to him, I said, you know, the only way to save the only way to fix a company jewel is to shut it down or to make

SPEAKER_25: it prescription, which would then crater your revenue, like shouldn't if you guys honestly believe that this isn't designed to induce new people to smoke, then you would make it a subscription product. And it would be you go to your doctor and say, I want to stop smoking. And they would give you a prescription to suck nicotine with vapors and oils and whatever horrible stuff is in a vape pen that gives you popcorn lung and all this terrible stuff. So

SPEAKER_23: it's obviously a very tense moment. And there's really no way for me to unwind what I've said. And I'm in my mind going, Oh, no, Jason, you got to stop J. Cal. This isn't an interview this, you

SPEAKER_18: know, and I was nicer to forever for Nicola than I am in this one. And this is why I don't train because, you know, if you think I'm candid on this pod, you know, you put four of Clico's in me. It's a whole different level of candidness. If you don't have

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SPEAKER_24: Okay, let's get back to this great episode. So this is turning into a this weekend startups interview at this party. I'm trying to stop myself. I'm trying so hard. But I'm so pissed

SPEAKER_23: off about jewel. And the stories I read I read every feature story you guys know how I'm on Twitter constantly I read everything get my hands on. And just remember all these kids who are addicted to it at schools and these people selling all their shares and making so much money and I said to him I said, Can I

SPEAKER_31: answer your question? Casey Crossway. I believe that was his name. Casey and I had a question link. What do you do

SPEAKER_18: before this? And I kid you not. I wasn't exactly drunk. I was

Chamath Palihapitiya: tipsy. You know, just about four or five books goes over six or seven hours. I wasn't like bombed or anything. I was but there was just a little tipsy in me and this is very rare. I mean, I probably get tipsy one time but one time a year on average in

SPEAKER_23: my life. I probably been tipsy no more than once a year on average in my life. Maybe less. And says I work in tobacco for

SPEAKER_37: 16 or 17 years. And I put my hands in my hand.

SPEAKER_24: The question is forming when you're an interview the question forms in your head. And I say to the guy. Did you make a lot of

SPEAKER_18: money at least? And I'm asking this question? Like a boxer throwing out a jab. Like this is like a little jab. Knowing that I've got like if if I if I can just get him to try to block the jab, I got

SPEAKER_12: the knockout punch coming next. And this is why like, I should be not interviewing people that I absolutely hate or detest because

SPEAKER_23: brings like some Irish out of me and he takes the bait. He says I did

SPEAKER_41: well, I did very well. Yes. And I said to him I said, Could you not

SPEAKER_06: have thought about something to do with the last 20 years of your

Chamath Palihapitiya: life? That was not so damaging to our children and society? And is

SPEAKER_44: what he just like? And I just was so angry that this person could

Chamath Palihapitiya: come out to a party and be proud of their work that I just said to

SPEAKER_45: him. I'm sorry. I can't sit here and be in your presence because I'm absolutely disgusted with your entire career and what you've

SPEAKER_23: chosen to do with your life. And I got up and walked away. And my friend who happened to witness this said, Well, that was awesome,

David Friedberg: dude. But that was a little intense, even for you. Then I realized he's like a friend of a friend, like one of my very close friends. And the guy is in fact trying to theoretically solve

Chamath Palihapitiya: problems. I mean, maybe he is trying to solve problems over there. I don't know. And so this is a public apology, a mea copa. If in fact, Casey is a good actor. I don't know that he is

SPEAKER_23: or he isn't. I'd like to apologize on behalf of Vuv Clicquot for misrepresenting their brand. For my friends who were at the party. To his wife, to him for making such an uncomfortable situation for all of us. Here's a clip of Casey. So despite

SPEAKER_49: companies attempts to address public concerns about their marketing, we know that youth continue to be targeted. In guidance published just last month, the FDA stated that e-cigarettes quote, continue to be marketed to minors through a wide variety of media and technology. Mr. Crossway, in your testimony, you state that Juul has quote, halted our broadcast, print and digital product advertising. Do you believe that the e-cigarette industry should be subject to the same advertising restrictions as combustible cigarettes? If not, why not?

SPEAKER_52: Congressman, I share your concern about youth getting access to

SPEAKER_49: evade. Should they be held under the same standards as cigarettes?

SPEAKER_53: I took the steps that in the company because I felt it was critical to limit any sort of awareness to tools that we were

SPEAKER_49: using. Their addictive products, should they be held to the same standards as smoking cigarettes? I think the FDA is going to have

SPEAKER_53: complete oversight over marketing practices. I chose to take the steps we did because I felt significant action needed to happen to address this issue.

SPEAKER_45: All right. I don't know if that answer was pretty good. I mean, it's pretty easy for any of us to say yes. Yes, of course, they should be held in the same standard. They're terrible for you. Nobody should be ingesting anything into their lungs. So I guess when you

David Friedberg: see an executive like that acting squirrely, I guess would be the most generous way. It's probably because they have super massive liability. And if he's been there for only two or three years and he's trying to clean the thing up. I don't know. I think there's really only one way to do it, which is just make these products,

Chamath Palihapitiya: you know, get shipped from your doctor with a prescription. I just watched dope sick. And if you want to understand this sort of mentality, the corporate executives who will do whatever it

SPEAKER_60: takes to print money, watch the incredible incredible film, a

Chamath Palihapitiya: series on Hulu worth paying for Hulu. One of my top five picks of the year is dope sick, starring two of my absolute favorite actors. My friend Peter stars guard, shout out center of the world and Michael Keaton, one of the great actors, my favorite performance by him, not

SPEAKER_00: Batman founder, about Ray Kroc, great entrepreneurial story and watch dope sick. And you know, we get a lot of heat here in the tech industry for our products. And then you have people running

SPEAKER_23: amok, whether it's Oxycontin or Jewel, doing serious physical

Chamath Palihapitiya: damage. And I wonder if we as a society are holding the right people accountable here. Yeah, Facebook's super damaging. But perhaps we want to start with the Oxycontin and the jewels. End of

David Friedberg: rant. I did get to interview Kathy Wood and Tiffany Zong. This was a very bizarre pairing by the conference producers of pre money

SPEAKER_65: who as I said, I don't want to say they bait and switched me, but they just changed the whole schedule and what I was going to

David Friedberg: work on when I was at that conference, but actually turned out pretty good. So they put Kathy Wood who manages 65 billion with a young executive, Tiffany Zong, who is running her first

SPEAKER_00: company, which is backed by Alexis Ohanian and it's a product to create, and we should have her on the program in six months producers, her product is essentially a platform, like a message board platform that allows you think of it like Reddit. But in order to get into the certain subreddit, or this group, you have to show your NFT. So it's going to be a platform for NFT holders to then have their chat space and then eventually maybe a wallet or the or maybe OpenSea ability. But think about how when an NFT project happens, you need to have a social club there. And we had a really actually good talk. It was a little bit hard because she's doing something very narrow, it was very early in her career. And then you have Kathy Wood, who is, you know, got decades of managing tens of billions of dollars.

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SPEAKER_06: ETF is ARKK is the ticker symbol. And we had a really vibrant

Chamath Palihapitiya: conversation. People said it was a little edgy. I don't think it was. She is a full contact, absolutely opinionated, fantastic

SPEAKER_00: interview. She when she comes on this, we can serve and she said she would, I think she'll be a top five to 10 guests of the year pretty easily. Thankfully, a Forbes writer in attendance,

SPEAKER_06: Carrie Dolan did write a great recap article. We'll put that in the

SPEAKER_00: show notes, we pulled some quotes about this interview. Wood said she she'd been quote, hearing that Bitcoin is so yesterday, I think that's a big mistake. Look at what's going on in El Salvador. I asked her, Hey, do you believe that dictator is doing this for a good reason? Do you think he's a bad actor? Because most people when they talk about the El Salvador president, make good note of the fact that he's a bit of an authoritarian and actually refers to himself as a democratic dictator, I think kind of poking fun at it. And I think he's a very bad actor who's using Bitcoin as a way to enrich himself, I suspect, and to get attention for his country. But that's just me speculating. She replied that El Salvador is quote, giving $30 in each chivo account digital wallets created for El Salvador citizens preach evo only 1.2 million people had bank

David Friedberg: accounts now 3 million out of 4 million eligible people in El Salvador have banking services. So that's absolutely fantastic

Chamath Palihapitiya: that he's getting everybody online. I asked her, Hey, listen, most tech doesn't last more than a decade, sometimes two. Why would Bitcoin last longer than that? And that's not because I believe that you have to understand when I ask questions on this show or on all in, I will ask provocative questions that are the counter to what that person's believes, so that they can put up their best defense of their position. And I sometimes say, the cynical reply or the cynical counter argument to your argument would be, but you can be sure when I'm asking people, you know, to explain what an acronym is 97 times out of 100, I

David Friedberg: probably know it I'm doing it for the benefit of the audience. I was asking that one for the benefit of the audience is because I really wanted to hear her thesis. And she said, this is the most secure blockchain technology out there. What's going on right

SPEAKER_00: now would have been no Rupert Mundell's he's a Nobel Prize winning found stream to introduce a global monetary system not under anyone's control. Look at Turkey, the Turkish people have lost half their purchasing power since February, wouldn't it be nice to have a little Bitcoin? And she's absolutely right about

David Friedberg: that. And then I asked her about holding Chinese stocks. And most people when you talk about China today, certainly a year

Chamath Palihapitiya: ago, did not want to talk about China, because we were in full engagement mode. You know, over the last 20 years, since Bill Clinton, Bush, into Obama, Trump, and now on to Biden, the approach to China has been, hey, we've we engage them, they will trend towards human rights, and it will make our two countries so entwined, that will reduce the chances of World War three, very hard for these two countries to go to war, if we're

David Friedberg: making iPhones, they're, you know, and selling them to Americans. And, you know, they are importing something from our country, they don't report that much, they do steal a heck of a

Chamath Palihapitiya: lot. Wood said, we own very, very few stocks in China, because they're unpredictable. They are grappling with what most governments are grappling with the gap between the rich and the poor. That's a really great insight from Kathy. I replied, I think the mad king is circling the wagons because he feels

David Friedberg: threatened. And then the audience was like, and I said, because they were kind of confusing that I'm talking about when I refer to the mad king. I don't know that he's gone mad. But the behavior certainly from the outside looks like somebody who is very nervous, and acting not in the best interest of a democracy or a vibrant capitalistic market. He's acting like somebody who is

Chamath Palihapitiya: either scared of losing control and wants to get it back. Wood's response is, I think it's to the benefit of the US of China isolates itself. They are less likely to become the global superpower. This is exactly the answer I've been trying to get from people on this program, who are afraid to say it. But this is the truth. What China has done in wanting to deal with stocks or move them from our stock exchanges to Hong Kong, which is happening with DD. If you look at the DD case, the reason is, on the New York Stock Exchange and on the Western Stock Exchange

David Friedberg: changes, you have to answer the question, are you controlled by the government in any way? Does the government have access? The Chinese are saying we don't want to share data with US markets. It's

SPEAKER_16: actually not true what the Chinese are saying, you find this hard to believe, but they're being dishonest about something. It's really because they don't want the companies to have to answer the question that the government is, in fact, running these companies and or has significant control over them, which obviously they do. I

David Friedberg: mean, look what happened to Jack Ma and Ant, look what happened to the ByteDance CEO, over and over, you know, the greatest CEOs and

SPEAKER_00: minds and entrepreneurs in China are electing to work on poetry and oil painting, shockingly at the peak of their entrepreneurial careers. It's because they're scared. And they were getting too high profile. And that was a threat. The authorities there. And I think our point is, hey, there's, they don't want really rich people in China and really poor people. So their approach to the fact that equities and companies grow very quickly, which is a good thing, is let's not allow individuals who create these amazing companies to benefit from that to this level. Let's take their money, they build it, and then we take control over it. And we redistribute that well, they're literally would be the equivalent of

David Friedberg: just taking Amazon, making it a state run service, and saying, you know what, Amazon should really be more like the post office, it should be

SPEAKER_00: more like the military, it's its core infrastructure, and the executives that that company make far too much money, we'll just redistribute

Chamath Palihapitiya: that to everybody else. So if you are, in fact, in our country, and you believe in wealth redistribution, there's an example of it happening. And I encourage you to move to China, or to Saudi Arabia, Korea, or another authoritarian country, Russia, and you can experience this for yourself, what it's like to live in a society, where the authoritarian powers can literally take your business from you, your life's work, and then redistribute it. If you really believe in that if you're a Bernie bro, if you're Elizabeth Warren, Stan, absolutely, move to one of those countries and experience what it's like, to have wealth taken from the people who created it, and you get to experience it being redistributed, you also will get to experience a million Uyghurs in a concentration camp being tortured, raped, and sterilized, and people selling books being tortured, and disappearing for two or three months, look up Hong Kong

SPEAKER_27: booksellers, and you can read those human rights abuses taking places in

Chamath Palihapitiya: those places. We also talked about how she is deploying capital, and investing, I thought it's a great part of the conversation. She said she was buying into companies like Robin Hood, which I have seen

SPEAKER_16: the shareholder of, thank you for believing in the company, I

SPEAKER_06: believe in it as well. And in companies that enable digital wallets, here's the quote, we're looking for the digital wallet,

Chamath Palihapitiya: Coinbase, Square's Cash App, PayPal's Venmo, less so. I am a

SPEAKER_16: shareholder of Square through an LP and a fund that invested in Square. So I was lucky to get some shares. And I also have a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of Coinbase shares, again, from being an LP and another fund. So having been an LP and various venture funds, I'm starting to trickle in little distributions of shares of

SPEAKER_17: companies that I didn't directly invest in. And so I own what a couple 100 shares of Coinbase and maybe close to seven figures worth of where's Cash App. So I'm definitely deep into the success of Square. And I think that company is amazing. So to make sure there's full disclosure here that I stumbled into some shares of

SPEAKER_83: it even though I wasn't a direct investor. Here's the quote, most

SPEAKER_16: analysts are focused on banks, which we think are being hollowed out by defy digital walls can't disagree with her. I mean, if you look at young people, young people are gonna spend more time in their Robin Hood account, their Coinbase account, etc, than they are in their Bank of America or Morgan Stanley account. Wealthfront falls into that if it's phone first, easy to use,

SPEAKER_00: quick, cheap, free, amazing. I asked her about Rivian. I said, speaking of fraud, should a company that sold zero cards be worth 150 billion? I didn't mention the company. Because it just was a theoretical question. Woods answer was investing is about the future. It's not fraud, perhaps misvaluation. I agree

David Friedberg: with her. It's potentially fraud, though, when you do see the misvaluation occur. And so I think misvaluation is a red flag of

Chamath Palihapitiya: potential fraud, or, you know, future failure. So it could be either of those two things. I don't call that fraud at all. We called out Nicola, we knew what blank Trevor Milton was saying was wrong. We knew that there was trouble. So it's a great

David Friedberg: discussion. I had a great time in Miami was good to get out. And I did find the location, I found three locations that are totally suitable for the all in summit. The all in summit will happen in all likelihood in April, we're trying to find a date get we got a I got the cost and everything dialed in, getting a conference producer to work with me and my team. And we will have 200 to 300 people, it'll be a very expensive ticket price, but we will share the videos, etc. And we'll probably have some event that's live and opened up to everybody. But we want to do like a small event

Chamath Palihapitiya: for the top top top people in the world. And I'm working on a creative format for how the content will flow for six hours a day, three in the morning, three in the afternoon, and then everything else will be networking. So the all in summit, you can sign up for that at the all in website. So if you go to summit.allinpodcast.co summit.allinpodcast.co, you can sign up to be notified by email, it's just going to be two days, ticket price will probably be very expensive, like five to $8,000 or something like that, because it's going to include like fancy dinner, wine dinners. And we're going to do it like top top like the TED conference. But like I said, we'll have a couple scholarships that will come out, don't email me don't ask about it, we're going to do that. At the end when we have like some number of tickets that will be available for scholarship, I'll explain it later. But don't email me now, because I don't know how we're going to do that. And each bestie, there's four of us will interview two people or so maybe three. So four times two is eight, that would be a day's programming. So I guess it's going to be four. So four times four 16, eight people a day. And those 16 are going to be the most iconoclastic, most interesting, challenging

SPEAKER_00: interviews in the world is what we're going for people who are making the biggest impact in the world. So I think you can

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David Friedberg: dot com to learn more. All right, last week, Better.com CEO, Vishal Garg laid off 900 employees, 9% of the company on a

Chamath Palihapitiya: zoom call. And the video went viral on tick tock. I'm going to break down the video for you piece by piece. And what a train wreck this is, how to do it properly, and what we can infer from this viral moment because it is very telling. So before we get into the video, I got to set the stage here, better claims to offer cheaper and faster mortgages and homeowner insurance products. Okay, it's better. I get it. They do this by eliminating the origination fees and commissions and they do use software. Okay, great. Seems like a reasonable concept. In May better.com agreed to go public via a SPAC, you guessed it, correct? With Aurora, A-U-R-O-R-A acquisition corp. I don't know who is running that SPAC, which individuals, the SPAC was backed by a $1.5 billion pipe from SoftBank, Moshiyoshi-san's company, investment vehicle. A pipe is a private investment in a public entity. In other words, it's like a venture capitalist directly investing in a company, except you do it in a public company. So the pipes tend to get paired with SPACs. So a SPAC is a merger, technically a special purpose acquisition corporation, you take a company, you take the SPAC, which has some money in it, and some shareholders, you merge them. And then the company takes over the this shell

SPEAKER_00: company, essentially, that's already public. And voila, they're public, but there's no offering of new shares unless you do a pipe. So they had a pipe there. The deal gave better a $6.9 billion valuations, according to our research here. And according to better SPAC presentation, 2020s revenue was $876 million. 2021 was expected to grow greater than 50% to 1.3 billion. They have about 10,000 employees, you divide 1.3 billion back of the envelope math here, which we did. It's about $130,000 of revenue per employee. That's respectable. That's not profits. Obviously, they could be investing it could cost them a lot of money to get each customer. So their CAC customer acquisition costs could be very high, we don't know how profitable they are here. But that's a large number of employees, but still respectable amount of revenue per employee. And obviously, if it doubles, triples, you know, you can have a very highly profitable business. According to Bloomberg, last week, better amended the terms of its original SPAC deal under the new arrangement, the $1.5 billion pipe would be split into two separate investments. Okay, so a retrade occurred from SoftBank. The first 750 750 million that is would be a bridge

David Friedberg: financing. And better would receive that immediately. That's a sign

SPEAKER_00: that things maybe if you need that bridge aren't so good, potentially, the other 750 million would be replaced by quote, a more structured convertible note, convertible note is a loan that converts at a certain valuation in the future, or a discount to whatever the valuation is. So they probably didn't have faith because the SPAC market has been struggling. Why is the SPAC market been struggling? SPAC market have been struggling because so many SPACs were created after Chamath, you know, pioneered the space my bestie, that a lot of people came in, and they just picked any company, willy nilly, and just tried to get them public because yeah, maybe they could ride the wave. And so this is late stage bubble, kind of moment, I believe when people are spacking companies that aren't that strong, or perhaps don't have products in market. I've talked ad nauseum on this program about Nikola, which is now proven a fraud Fisker, which I suspect will be a zero. It's my guess. I don't know if there's any fraud there. Rivian Lucid, I think just got a notice from the SEC about their SPAC. That doesn't mean anything. The SEC regularly asks questions, I would guess nine out of 10 or 95 times out of 100. When the SEC wants information, it's just because they want to make sure there's nothing wrong. That's they're a watchdog, right? So kind of like getting audited by the IRS. So when you see an SEC asking for information, doesn't mean it's an investigation yet. It's a request for information. So as a journalist, you want to pump the brakes and not make a sensational headline. Of course, people do. So I would give lucid the benefit of the doubt. It's when the Justice

SPEAKER_16: Department or somebody like that, then files an investigation. And you know, things start to roll in a different direction, right? But when you do see these valuations get disconnected from reality, which lucid Rivian Fisker and Nicola all are totally disconnected from reality, you

Chamath Palihapitiya: start to worry when SPACs, SPAC companies, and these mergers happen with companies that don't have revenue don't have customers, you should be concerned. I said this years ago, somebody's got to pull the clip from when the SPAC stuff started. If you're investing in a company before it goes public, that's Jason's razor, not Occam's razor, Jason's razor. Jason's razor says companies worth more than a billion dollars, they don't have customers yet. And they don't have a product in market. It's either a fraud, or it's a

SPEAKER_00: potential failure. In most cases, not all. So with that

David Friedberg: caveat, the new deal needs to be approved by regulators for better. And the SPAC is now on hold. So when the market gets

Chamath Palihapitiya: shaken up, everybody always asked me what's happens to private companies? Well, it takes a little while for it to trickle down to the private company level. But it does hit the people who are about to go public or her late stage. And typically what happens is a retrade. The valuations aren't holding up in the public market. Therefore, everybody who's

SPEAKER_00: pre public retrades, changes the terms of the deal. And you see

Chamath Palihapitiya: things like this happen. This is all very important to understand what happens next. And SoftBank restructuring is probably because they want to keep the deal, they believe in the company, they just don't believe in the price. So if they don't longer believe in the price, and they had to give a certain price to win the deal, right, they wanted to win that deal, they gave a great price. SoftBank is knowing for paying

David Friedberg: top dollar, and you know, going long and have big, big funds, you know, like $100 billion funds. In fact, 50 billion $100 billion funds, they're really trying to double their

Chamath Palihapitiya: revenue. So SoftBank retrades for two reasons, they want to keep the deal. So they put the 750 in, they probably put that in at a different price. So maybe a lower price because they know this facts not doing so good. And then the 750 could be

SPEAKER_00: at a floating price, it could say 750. At whatever the trading prices, you know, for the first 10 days or something, they can come up with all kinds of devices. And if they buy the shares, and they go down, they could get extra shares, there's all kinds of ways to make sure they don't get screwed with that

SPEAKER_16: investment. And here's why it's important. The layoffs happened one day after the stack was restructured and put on hold. In other words, the founder was spooked, and probably

Chamath Palihapitiya: wondering about their runway and revenue. So let's get into the clips. I'm going to try to take this very clinically, it was done terribly. This is the opposite of how you should do any type of layoff in person. In small groups is typically how these are done. Do them in this method and blame it on the

David Friedberg: pandemic means you really whoever the HR person is and the CEO of this company should probably be fired for being knuckleheads. Let's get into it. We're going to do three parts here. The intro, the message, and the wrap up. Break down each

Chamath Palihapitiya: portion individually. I've had to do layoffs before it is brutal. People will cry, will get upset. And even if you give them four weeks, eight weeks, three months of severance, if you take care of their healthcare for a couple of months, pay for the Cobra, whatever it is, whatever the standard practices, even with that, it's tough, because you might love your co workers, you might love the job, you have to have a lot of empathy here. And nobody likes to be rejected. Nobody likes to work really hard, and then get this news out of nowhere. And so this was a rush

SPEAKER_75: job. And the execution is amongst the worst I've seen clip number one, 35 seconds. I'll see you on the other side. I

SPEAKER_99: come to you with not great news. The market has changed, as you

SPEAKER_102: know, so that hopefully, we can continue to thrive and deliver on a mission. This isn't news that you're gonna, it was my decision. And I wanted you to hear from me. It's been a really, really challenging decision to make. This is the second time in my career I'm doing this, and I do not hope to be stronger.

SPEAKER_01: Okay. This is off to a very bizarre start. He's made it about himself. He cried. It's never easy to do this. He's had to do this. This is he's not impacted by this. He's a

SPEAKER_00: billionaire, apparently, because of this great company that he's

Chamath Palihapitiya: built or good company. And already he's starting out that he doesn't want to do this. But it's existential. And it's all

SPEAKER_00: about him. This would have been better done.

David Friedberg: If each manager went to their group, and said, we are in the

Chamath Palihapitiya: process of downsizing the company 9%. Our group has been impacted. We're going to have be asked to take 25% of our team size down. This is never easy. We are going to make sure everybody in the company has a safe landing, we're going to work on helping you find another job. Ultimately, this is on management, that we didn't do our job plan properly. So the blame falls on every manager, including myself, let's say I was running the customer support group, we got ahead of our skis, the market conditions changes, but no excuses. And we are going to make sure everybody is taken care of. We really appreciate your contribution. And we apologize for not doing our jobs better. It's 100% on us. Instead, he made this about his emotions, right? It's very weird. Also, the cadence of him talking and the fact that the CEO is doing it is very weird, almost like he's trying to score points for his own suffering. And again, making it about himself is just bizarre. And talking about the last time he cried, and he hopes to be stronger. I mean, who's coaching this person? Like, it's not about you, dummy. It's not about you. It's about the person who has to go to their spouse and their three kids, three weeks before Christmas, and say, Hey, mommy or daddy is out of work, and I got to

David Friedberg: find another job. And I got 30 days worth of severance, and I got 90 days worth of Cobra, but we're going to be okay, I'm going to find a job in that time period, yada, yada. And of course, we're in a time where anybody who's working for this company, if you were able to get

SPEAKER_00: a job at better.com, given the number of jobs that are open, you can be sure that there is, there's a job shortage for information working right now, they're all going to get jobs. So there is some

David Friedberg: reality here that this is not like a factory plant closing in a one horse town, and those folks are going to have to pick up their family and move to another location. These are knowledge workers who are going to find instant jobs. If anything, this is gonna, as is the case with most knowledge workers when they

SPEAKER_00: get a nice severance package. So a lot of the people who still have the jobs are like, Can I get that? And that is actually the better best practice is to say, Hey, we're going to do layoffs, they're going to happen in the next 30 days. If you would like to take this package, you can talk to HR, you can email them, and the package is going to be this many days in this much severance. And we're going to invest your shares for a year. And we're going to give you five years to option those shares because you don't want people who are being laid off, there are no fault of them to have to execute their shares. The very technical thing. But if you have to execute your shares, you might have to come out of pocket for $10,000 to buy your 10,000 shares for $1 each. And now you're leaving, you're getting your last check for 7k. And you got to come out of pocket for $10,000 or lose the upside that this guy promised you kind of sucks. Let's go to the second clip. This one's 48

SPEAKER_108: seconds.

SPEAKER_110: We are laying off about 15% efficiency and performances and productivity. If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately. Are you kidding me? What does this mean for what's next? You're going to get an email from HR, AskHRInventor.com to your personal email address regarding details of your severance and your benefits. For all US employees, we're providing four weeks of severance, one month of full benefits and two months of COBRA for which we will pay the premium. So three months.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Okay, again, you do this as you would do this in smaller groups, you would do this in a more humane way, you would give people the ability to opt into it. So the pain was lessened, you would take responsibility, none of that's happening here. And you also have this very bizarre, effective immediately, terminated effective immediately, you don't have to speak to people that way. People should be able to say goodbye. I mean, if it's through no fault of their own, like listen, if you're firing somebody because they stole something from you, I had some dipshit steal, like one of our

David Friedberg: databases and we caught them. And that person's getting walked to the door, if you steal like a database on your way out, and you're going to get like, the hammer of like, vore is going to come down a part of your head from a law firm, if you steal data from your employer, which is really dumb thing to do. But this

Chamath Palihapitiya: delivery is robotic and callous and the effective immediately is just done terribly. This is not the person you send out there to do it. It's just his approach is like this foe sadness in his voice, or maybe it's real. I mean, but either way, his delivery is terrible. It's cold, it's callous, it's 1500 people or 900, whatever it is 900 people at the same time, it's just all kinds of bad in

SPEAKER_01: terms of the delivery. And here's the wrap up 28 seconds. I'll see you on the other side.

SPEAKER_126: Thank you for each and every one of yours, individual contributions to better. I wish the news was different. I wish we were thriving enthusiastically as we were at the beginning of this year. But that's not the case. And I am sure you will leave

SPEAKER_112: us the best of luck. Thank you for everything you've done for better.

David Friedberg: Yeah, if you were actually thankful for everything they done for better, you would have done a better job at sharing this news and planning it. Again, the wrap up is cold and callous. These people work for you, it deserves more than 90

Chamath Palihapitiya: seconds or three minutes, deserves a conversation, deserves a conversation amongst each unit together, and a little bit more of an explanation. This was done in a very acerbic, cutthroat, mechanical way. And it lacked humanity. And it could be some people are just not good at speaking like humans. We all

SPEAKER_01: have friends who are a bit robotic, pointing anybody out here. Sachs, Greenberg. But you know, in moments like this, this is where your humanity shines, or doesn't. And in this case, it's the latter. It's worth noting, this is not the first time,

Chamath Palihapitiya: the show. Garg has attracted bad press as the CEO of better. Typically, if people show you who they are, you should believe

David Friedberg: them. In 2020, Garg had an email leaked to Forbes, where he called employees dumb dolphins. Quote from the leaked email, you are too damn slow. Cap locks on. We're a bunch of dumb dolphins. Cap locks on. And dumb dolphins get caught in nets and eaten by sharks. So stop it. This is all caps. So stop it, stop it, stop

Chamath Palihapitiya: it right now. You're embarrassing me. This is a bad Wolf of Wall Street parody here. I mean, this is not inspiring. It's not intelligent. This is not a we hey, we can do better. This is

SPEAKER_00: I'm better than you and you're dumb. Let me ask a question here. Who's stupider? The person who hired a dumb dolphin or the person who's calling his employees a dumb dolphin, if they are in fact dumb dolphins, and you're correct? Well, then you're a goddamn idiot for hiring them. That's your responsibility, dummy.

SPEAKER_136: And if you make the wrong hire, you don't berate people and call them dumb dolphins in an email. So how stupid is this guy? That he has the gall to attack the employees that he hired. And to

SPEAKER_25: put it in email. You moron. You don't talk to people like this. If

SPEAKER_136: you're going to talk to people, you would take an individual and the way you would give the speeches. I hired you all because of your

SPEAKER_28: incredible potential. And I have not done my job to give you the tools to support you. And I haven't given you the clarity apparently, of what it's going to take for us to win. For us to

Chamath Palihapitiya: win. We have to consistently get better. And that includes me. If you have ways for me to do my job. But 5% better a week, I'm all ears. You can email me can email me from an anonymous account, I'll take any feedback, create a burner Yahoo account and email me everything I'm doing that I could do better. Now, as for what y'all could be doing better. Let me tell you. I don't see the attention to detail. And the selecting of our I'm just gonna pick if it's a sales team, you're giving them the speech, I don't see the attention to detail in selecting great targets to sell our product. I feel our materials have not gotten demonstrably better. And I see a lot of people putting in a small amount of effort in customer success. And so I'd like a plan from everybody. Any idea you have on how to increase customer success and to get better leads, because we're good at selling. But we suck at customer success. So we're losing great customers. And I'll be honest, we need to pick and define our ideal customer profiles. So we're gonna have two offsite meetings, one's occurring in 10 days on Friday, the other one's gonna occur two Fridays from then. Well, everybody put the thinking caps on and I want this company to be successful. And I want to see you all become millionaires. And if I haven't given you the tools you need, and that's on me. And if you haven't done your jobs, and you do have the tools, well, that's on you. So I'd like everybody to have a candid discussion about how

SPEAKER_23: we can all get this done. Because I want to see everybody here get really rich. And I want this company to be really successful. So let's do it. That's how you give them. That's how you give a

SPEAKER_25: speech. That's how you do it. You're candid. And you're looking at the process, but you're not attacking the people. What's the point of telling somebody they're stupid. If they're stupid, you should have

SPEAKER_136: fired them, you should never hired them. That's on you. If the job's not getting done, well, it's you and the manager who set the goals, set the resources and do the hiring. So get a big mirror out dummy. Michelle, it's time for you to go to coaching, and perhaps

SPEAKER_00: therapy, and to get a mirror out and to look in that mirror, and say, Who's the real idiot here? The person who hired people and called them idiots? Or the people who maybe just don't have a good leader? You're a terrible leader. I can tell you that. And if I was on your board, I would have the board fire you for that email. And for that performance. Those are unacceptable performances as a CEO, that's just bad leadership, you're unfit to lead. And maybe you have control over your board. But anybody who's working at this company, I should leave immediately. Because I can tell you from just these two instances, that this person is

SPEAKER_23: not a leader, you should be part of this person, in all likelihood, will repeat these same mistakes. Because for somebody to change, they need to want to change and they need to

SPEAKER_28: take deliberate action to change. I don't see that in this

SPEAKER_00: individual. According to the Forbes article in a company why call after the layoffs was announced, the CEO told all remaining employees that better should have done the laughs months ago. Okay,

David Friedberg: fine. If you have to do layoffs. Yeah, you could have always done them earlier. He also warned that their productivity was being

SPEAKER_00: monitored. What? A product service being monitored? Okay, I know about this. There is a movement with remote work to monitor employees computers to know how much time this person. Now there's a third one, there's a third piece of evidence that if you work at better, if you were my cousin, my brother, or my friend, and you worked at this company, I'd say, Look, I doesn't know how to do a layoff properly. I called his own employees that he hired dumb dolphins. It's not even clever.

SPEAKER_25: He's trying to be clever. Dumb dolphins get quit. The metaphor is dumb. You can't even come up with a good metaphor. Michelle can't come up with a decent metaphor. Dolphins getting caught in it. Dolphins are brilliant. You ever meet a dumb dolphin that doesn't exist. Dolphins mess with sharks. They mess with great whites. Dolphins talk to each other. They're in packs. They're brilliant. Terrible metaphor. There's no such thing. It's an oxymoron. A dumb dolphin. Just based on this person's ability to give a motivational speech or come up

SPEAKER_136: with a halfway decent metaphor. I would not work for him. And nor

SPEAKER_00: should you. You're a better employee. Get the hell out of there as quick as possible. Start your exit. And if you really want to stick it to somebody like this, who treats his people this poorly, the best thing for you to do is to take what you

SPEAKER_28: learned. Take your education, don't steal any documents, and

Chamath Palihapitiya: start a competing company. Because this person is not loyal to you. There's obviously a huge opportunity here. If there's 20 of you, and you're really smart, get in your own private slack room.

SPEAKER_00: If you've been laid off, create a revenge startup. And go take this person on on the field. That's what I would do. If you got your if y'all got laid off, create a revenge startup and stick it to this guy. Now, we had three examples of this person being horrible. But wait, there's more. And this just gets it's

David Friedberg: just so much worse. Here are some comments from the CEO made on blind. Blind is apparently a place where you can verify that you

Chamath Palihapitiya: have an email address at google.com or at fb.com, whatever it is. And then post anonymously. It's like an anonymous message board, like Glassdoor, but you know, the person is actually working at the company. Some comments were left on blind, email me directly and we'll pay you to leave early. So we don't sit here waiting for you to show up with your end of the work that needs to be done, and then get left holding the bag. Also alleged that 250 of laid off employees were only working two hours per day. Quote from blind, they were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills and pay our bills get educated. So I guess he has monitoring software on computers, which is a thing now. If you get sent in a laptop from your employer with everything pre installed, you can be sure they have monitoring software. So you should not do I mean, you shouldn't do that work anyway. But don't do personal shopping. Don't go on social media unless that's your actual job. Do not read stories that are not directly related. You just don't screw

David Friedberg: around when you're at work. Assume that it's being recorded. The two companies I run, we don't record people stuff. If people are stealing from us, you know, by not doing their job, it's my I take it in a small company as it's my fault for not putting managers in place who are monitoring the work product of people. But I mean, in this day and age, do we need to put monitoring software? What I tell people is, you need to be available to do a huddle between work hours, put in eight hours plus a day and we're good. Do 40 50 60 hours a week, whatever you think is the right amount to move the ball forward for the company. But I trust you. That's how you have to approach it

SPEAKER_16: with remote work. You got trust people and hire the best people you can. But yeah, I mean, it's possible people were logged in

SPEAKER_00: for two hours a day, and pretending they were working the other hours a day or they were, I don't know, like surfing the web and doing Instagram or tick tock on their work computers. It's possible. But still, why are you on blind? Like back channeling this? That is a private conversation between HR and

SPEAKER_28: those individuals. If you catch people doing that, you fire them. It's right. It's really that simple. That's not a public discussion you should be having. You handle this stuff privately. Is there an HR person who works at this goddamn company? Who's the HR person here? I mean, they got to get

SPEAKER_00: fired immediately. The whole HR department needs to go. Guard confirmed that he was behind the posts after being questioned by a reporter from Fortune magazine. Guard stood by his comments on blind. When asked by the fortune reporter, he said quote, I think they could have been phrased differently. But honestly, the sentiment is there. This person's a narcissist. Well, it's my professional opinion. I work with founders for a living person's not fit to lead is a narcissist and has delusions of grandeur, which is you know, being a narcissist and having delusions of grandeur can be great for taking on like big, big difficult problems in the world, a little delusion sprinkled in there is good. But when it messes with your humanity and how you treat your own team members, how you treat the lowest paid person with the most menial job in your organization is how you're defined as a leader. We say that again, how you treat a

SPEAKER_23: person working in the mailroom or cleaning the garbage cans that defines you as a leader. That's what defines you. And you can see

SPEAKER_01: it. And the great leaders, they stop. They talk to the security guard, they know the security guards name, when they're coming in the back door to get into their secret CEO office. Hey, how's it going, Bob? When they go to the, you know, gym, they know the person at the front desk's name, that's great leadership, right? When

Chamath Palihapitiya: you look at all of humanity, and you're rooting for them, and you're treating them as individuals, that's great leadership. That's the

SPEAKER_00: opposite of this person. What is particularly disturbing about this is, you know, it touches on a lot of things about stacks and remote work. Sure, we can we can we can geek out about on that. But who in their right mind would buy this stock? But this person has the leader. I mean, I don't mean to unload on this guy. But this person is

SPEAKER_23: not fit to lead. And if you're not fit to lead, then who on earth

SPEAKER_28: would want to own equity in a company run by this moron, period

SPEAKER_27: end of story. I mean, really? This person is not fit to lead.

SPEAKER_00: There is something to be said for the efficiency of companies in the new remote era, there is a discussion going on in the back channels, that during remote work, when people leave, year, do you actually see when one person leaves a group of 10 performance go up or down? They were the weakest person in the group performance goes up because everybody's not wasting their time with the weakest person in the group. That's why cutting the bottom 10% is some people's idea of a management best practice is not my idea of a best practice. I think it's quite possible you could have five people playing perfect, perfectly chef's kiss. Don't get rid of anybody. That's what I have at this weekend starts right now. There's no dead weight. There's no dead weight in my companies that I know of. It's my job to know and my co workers and my leaders in my company will tell me that way. First is not keeping up with everybody. So

David Friedberg: there is this concept, Jack Welch, you know, put everybody on a bell curve cut the weakest people so you get a chance to replace

Chamath Palihapitiya: them. And there is something to be said about that, whether you're running a sports team or your unit in your company. So your unit is the sales team, and you cut the weakest salesperson who's not hitting their targets, that opens up a seat for somebody who might beat their targets. So you do have to keep that in mind. But that occurs in the group with that manager and you want to enable that manager to make that decision. You don't want to just unload on your entire workforce like this because it just creates toxicity. This is a toxic person. Vishal is toxic. Nobody wants to work for a toxic leader. I've had to lay people off and it sucked. And I did regret not doing more earlier in the dot com era and I was

David Friedberg: 27 28 years old and I apologized. I put it on myself. I just showed people the books. Look, we were doing 500,000, you know, in the November issue of the magazine and we did 300,000, you know, and now people won't even pay their bills

Chamath Palihapitiya: from two episodes ago. We're running out of money. And I run my companies with a

SPEAKER_01: year, a year of payroll in the bank because I never want to have to go through

Chamath Palihapitiya: this. And I tell everybody on my team, let's be frugal, but not cheap. Let's not get ahead of our skis. If we're spending a hundred K a month, we should have 1.2

SPEAKER_155: million in the bank. We're finding 200 K a month. We should have 2.4 million in

Chamath Palihapitiya: the bank. You always want to keep enough cash in the bank. And maybe that means you're not, you know, your growth rate isn't as high as it could be if you kept six months in the bank. But I like the idea that employees know that if something goes wrong, we have time to fix it. Now that doesn't mean layoffs aren't going to occur. But it means you can do them properly. Because I had to do this at Mahalo as well. When the Panda update hit, and I had, we went from literally a $10 million run rate on Google AdSense down to like, well, percent of that like, literally do $1 million. And I was spending at 75 employees. I mean, it was getting expensive. You know, we were breaking even or losing 50 K a

David Friedberg: month or something like that. We had a lot of money, but I had to lay people off. There's no choice. And just gave everybody as good a deal as I can. And I

Chamath Palihapitiya: think different companies can give different deals. When you're a tiny company, you can give people two weeks. Hopefully, give them some notice before that to start looking, maybe you let people opt into it. So you know, you try to give two weeks in a small company, a medium sized company gives a month, this is a big company, no reason they couldn't give in two months. This person obviously had a lot of resentment built up for the team that he built. And that's another tell. If you are resenting the team that you have, well, then you got to come in and you got to reorganize. This person probably should have done a reorg amount of layoff. And the reorg should have occurred like this. You know, the the we got to be able to have more revenue per employee, we need to be at 150 K 160 K per employee for us to have enough runway. Therefore, I've looked at all the departments, I looked at the performance of each department with the number of people in each department, we need to have more people in product, more people in sales, less people in marketing, less people in HR, less people in operations. Therefore, these groups

SPEAKER_16: have to cut 25%. We're going to have a meeting about cutting those 25%. And we're going to do it very thoughtfully. And you could just

Chamath Palihapitiya: tell everybody we're doing a reorg, right? Real pretty simple. There is another crazy thing that's happening right now, which is the public markets are in a bit of turmoil because of the new variant of the pandemic. You're listening to this as an archival performance 20 years from now, the pandemic had its, you know, next big Omicron. After Delta, we don't know week four or five of this being out there. Seems like it's not going to be less deadly. But certainly it's going to be more contagious could be the end of the pandemic. But who knows, things could keep happening. And so in uncertain times, it's even more important for leaders to be more considered, and to run their companies with a steady hand. They're

SPEAKER_96: looking at you in your company, if you're running a company, they're

Chamath Palihapitiya: looking at you and they're looking for the steady hand. So you have to not lose your cool or act like an idiot on a zoom call. It's been a great show. If you have ideas for the show, email producers at this week in startup.com