SPEAKER_00: Okay, everybody, I'm back. I'm sorry. I had a stomach virus. I lost five pounds. Yes. I'm looking felt I hit my weight loss goals, but we got a big news for you today.

SPEAKER_02: Big news in the world of Twitter. We do. We have quite the show.

SPEAKER_03: Elon Musk announced that he has put in an offer to buy Twitter and take it private this morning. This is where I should caveat that we are discussing this as though he means it,

SPEAKER_06: which is one thing we should note.

SPEAKER_07: And we're going to break all of that down. The five four 20 offer has been given $54 and 20 cents. I might even up that offer Molly to five, four 20 69. I might increase it by just a fraction of a, a penny there.

David Friedberg: I'm frankly astonished that that edit needed to be made.

SPEAKER_03: Yes. Uh, and yeah, we have a long conversation about this, about fixing Twitter, about product improvements, financial incentives, what changes Elon could make.

SPEAKER_12: And, uh, then we have everybody's favorite segment, the, we live in the future segment, where we're going to talk about the cruise autonomous car that

Jason Calacanis: appeared to go slightly rogue last week when it was pulled over by the police. We're going to break that video down. It's a little bit. It's like a chaser, if you will.

David Friedberg: It's a little bit of a chaser. We live in the future. This is like, uh, your, your peak into your dystopian, hilarious AI versus the

Chamath Palihapitiya: police, uh, one of many to come soon. I'm sure. Uh, when AI is asked to pull over, it's going to be a great show.

SPEAKER_21: I like, it really is really stick with us. Like really stick with us this time. We mean it. We mean it. We mean it.

SPEAKER_23: This week in startups is brought to you by LinkedIn marketing to redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash this week in startups Indochino makes custom fitted suits shirts and casual wear at affordable prices shop for your next best look or book a virtual style consultation at Indochino.com right now you can get $50 off of any purchase of three 99 or more using code twist at checkout and open phone as a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number. Isn't one of them open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices visit open phone.co slash twist to get 20% off your first six months.

SPEAKER_27: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of this week in startups. I'm back.

SPEAKER_28: Sorry. I got a stomach virus the last couple of days. And so Molly had to solo dolo yesterday. Luckily we had the world coin interview, which if you haven't had a chance, I think a super important one for you to check out. That was, I believe Wednesday show April 13th looking back on the world coin interview.

SPEAKER_30: I think we did a good job interviewing them. What is your takeaway 48 hours after the interview, Molly?

SPEAKER_32: I'm curious.

SPEAKER_06: I think so too. No, I 100% agree. I think I sort of semi joked in the intro that it was a sort of a good cop, bad cop interview

Jason Calacanis: in a way. I think it's really valuable to, you know, as much as it is not always worthwhile to have CEOs come on because they're trained and they like say all the things that they're trained to say there can be real value in a situation like that in getting the story directly from the CEO. Absolutely. And I think Alex was, you know, I mean, given the negative press, like, I think it was, he did a great job coming on and explaining himself. Yeah. I still think there's some real questions and. Oh, more questions. More questions.

SPEAKER_02: More questions were even raised by that interview, but I think it was a really good interview. I think, I think so. We did great.

SPEAKER_39: We'd know. Well, I mean, here's the thing.

SPEAKER_28: The, a lot of times the press, uh, writ large, uh, will, and we, we know this cause we, we recently had a discussion about this as well. If it bleeds, it leads, right? We, who are we talking to about this? We just had a discussion about depression.

SPEAKER_40: It was with, uh, Derek Thompson from the Atlantic. Derek Thompson from the, uh, Atlantic.

SPEAKER_00: And we were talking about, Hey, the press has always leaned into the negative part of the story gets clicks and particularly today's day and age. You have tech is having an outsized impact impact on society. Therefore you have the combination of, well, they need to be held more accountable, which is a reasonable. Approach by the press, right? The press is here as a backstop and to protect the public and inform the public at its best. Yep. When it's its best self, right? And let's face it. The press isn't always its best self. Neither are CEOs, right? There's a range of how people perform in the world. And you combine with that with a bleeds, it leads. So you put those two factors together. Sometimes the press will, you know, go after a company and it could be just incompetence or misunderstanding. Right. And in this case, it was probably a bad idea to do the testing without having the coin ready.

SPEAKER_42: Yeah. Because if they had just given people the damn coin. Right. At minimum, there's that. And that was a bad decision. Yes. And on top of it, it is a project that I would say feels Spectre-like.

SPEAKER_00: And when I say Spectre, I'm referring to the James Bond villainous organization that figures

SPEAKER_46: out ways to take over the world and blow up. Getting everybody's Irish scan and having their biometric is fraught with like, who's going to control all this? Yeah. And why are you? Yeah. Seems like, yeah, nothing to see over here. Quite literally.

Jason Calacanis: Like not seeing that coming. Yeah. Is I think willfully naive, right? Like the idea that you would just like roll out into the world and start grabbing eyeballs and nobody would freak out about it is like, come on, dude, do you live in the world at

SPEAKER_51: all? But also, if you have this better plan for that, like, oh, we're going to open source it and we're going to make it a nonprofit and we're going to do all of these things, have an actual

Jason Calacanis: timeline for that and stick with it. Right? Like there's still some questions that need to be answered slightly more precisely. But I think what I find amazing about it is just the idea that that somebody really truly thought like, well, we'll develop this like super sci-fi looking iris scanner, roll

SPEAKER_10: it out into the world and nobody will have any panic about that at all.

SPEAKER_54: And not only roll it out, but roll it out with like basically volunteers, like, because it's a distributed system. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Anyway, it's a great, it is a great interview. You should definitely listen to it. I've been thinking about, and I think this is going to come up a little later, very soon. I've been thinking a lot about narratives and how narratives do take over, right? That was one of the things that Alex told us was like, there's this narrative.

Jason Calacanis: It took over it.

SPEAKER_51: There are other parts of it, of our story that aren't reflected by that narrative. Um, but I mean, this is an important thing.

SPEAKER_42: I think it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00: It's an important thing for founders to know is that you can either control your narrative

SPEAKER_07: or social media, the press, a competitor, somebody else will, or randomness will then and, you know, dictate the narrative of your startup. So it's good for you to just get out ahead of it.

SPEAKER_00: And then also to challenge when people get it wrong. Yeah. And I think the easiest thing here is they have a lot of resources. Clearly, the company's raised a decent amount of money. And I think they, um, were moving fast and breaking things.

David Friedberg: And if you're taking the philosophy of like, uh, ask for better to ask for forgiveness than for permission,

SPEAKER_00: uh, beg for forgiveness than ask for permission is a philosophy in Silicon Valley and move fast and break things as a philosophy here. When you do that and you've got a narrative that is a little scary for people or really radical and new in the world.

David Friedberg: Yeah. You gotta take a little more care with your narrative. I think they realize that. And it, you know, here's one of the great new, the great news about narratives is my Lord, you know, people forget them, uh, real quick. Right. It's like, oh my God, am I supposed to hate this company? Whatever. It's like, uh, people will not even remember.

SPEAKER_00: The rage machine is like, it's, it feels like it's spiking hotter and hotter every time, but the half-life is so short.

David Friedberg: So as intense as the narrative can get when, you know, just examining the narrative, whether it's Will Smith smack or, you know, I'm sorry, that happened. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: Or world coin. Like these things spike to a level where everybody in the world has to talk about it on Twitter and everywhere else.

SPEAKER_63: And then it's just like, oh, it's over. Yep. Mean time to irrelevant.

SPEAKER_65: Mean time to meme. Mean time to meme.

SPEAKER_68: Mean time to meme. And then mean time to forget it's like all, it's just a funnel. It's just a time. Mean time to memory. Mean time to. It's just a distant memory.

SPEAKER_56: All right. All the way. It's so funny. I feel like our chat room is really agitated right now because they want us to talk about something else. Okay. So let's do it. It's a weird.

SPEAKER_63: I don't know why in our first news story, uh, Elon has offered to purchase all outstanding shares of Twitter and take the company private in a deal that would be worth 43 billion.

SPEAKER_77: Take us into the details here in a moment.

SPEAKER_56: I believe we can safely say that the question of why he declined the board seat has been answered.

SPEAKER_51: Elon Musk submitted a letter to Twitter's board of directors and filed with the SEC quote, offering to buy 100% of Twitter for five or 20. I'm sorry, $54 and 20 cents a share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. The offer letter is addressed to Brett Taylor, the co-CEO of Salesforce, who became Twitter's chairman in November, 2021. Eli's rationale was quote, I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe. And I believe free speech is a social imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. Musk concluded, my offer is my best and final offer. And if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_40: It's great that all this information is finally out. Yeah. It's definitely been everybody's response to this for sure.

SPEAKER_86: Yeah.

SPEAKER_85: And you know, the good news is Elon has now talked very publicly about it. Um, so I felt comfortable commenting on it a little bit.

SPEAKER_88: Obviously I've had many conversations with Elon about Twitter and in fact encouraged him to join back in the day, uh, along with my friend Billy, uh, which, you know, he has said publicly, uh, and I've been friends with the founders of Twitter forever and declined to invest in it famously.

SPEAKER_28: Uh, when it was a very young company, cause I thought it would just be a cacophony of lunacy, which I was right.

SPEAKER_94: Wow. You are not wrong. I was not wrong. It could be a great investment.

SPEAKER_40: Right and wrong at the same. Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_98: Like that's true.

David Friedberg: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you know, the good news is his motivation is very much a, it's obviously not financial because if you were to look at what, what's an, what would be, if you, if I were to give you three companies to invest in Molly, uh, Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter. Yeah. So if you rank order, which one you think will have the greatest returns in the coming decades, it would be, you could argue Tesla or SpaceX. Right. Exactly. And then a distance 5,000 would be Twitter. Right. Like I could see Twitter doubling or tripling in value, especially under Elon, who, you know, is a, a product genius, obviously, uh, and a great leader of companies. Uh, so I might argue he's the best right now on the planet. So, you know, doubling or tripling is nothing when compared to what could happen with SpaceX and Tesla. So it's, he was very clear in his Ted discussion with Chris Anderson today. Um, that this had nothing to do with that, which is great. Uh, and then he was very clear about his intentions.

SPEAKER_63: He is, I think like many of us in Gen X, uh, or older believes in free speech as a fundamental, very important aspect of society.

SPEAKER_07: And that there are laws around free speech and that those should be followed.

SPEAKER_00: And then he was also very detailed about saying, Hey, listen, what the algorithm and shadow banning and all the stuff that's occurring in private, in secret. Uh, at all these companies, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, and of course, Twitter, all of that should be open sourced. The algorithm should be on GitHub. Everybody should be going through it with a fine tooth comb and detailing this is what the algorithm is actually doing. And I would like to opt out of the algorithm or I'd like to pick another algorithm, which was something that Jack has, you know, former CEO and co-founder and creator of Twitter has talked about.

David Friedberg: So I guess that's a good place to start, which is the overall motivation. Uh, which I can tell you firsthand is true. He cares about this stuff deeply. Uh, and that is the reason for wanting to buy this.

SPEAKER_88: The other thing he said was he wants to bring along as many as the shareholders as possible. So it's not like he wants to own and control the whole thing.

David Friedberg: You can have 2000 investors in a private company. And so what he would like to do is he's been pretty clear. Now in this Ted talk is let's take it private and bring all of these investors along with us as many as possible, because then that would lower his burden of having to come up with the cash and cover this. And obviously coming up with the cash to cover this, you know, might mean liquidating other shares or, you know, raising money against us.

SPEAKER_88: There's a lot of mechanical ways to do this or giant hedge funds that would love to back in Elon. Um, I can tell you like not from, and to be clear, I don't have any inside information here, but there are plenty of large hedge funds who love the idea of taking a company that is mismanaged, which I think we'd all agree of all the big tech companies. Twitter has been amongst the most mismanaged and, you know, not grown since it's IPO. In fact, I think it's trading below its IPO price, or maybe it's just around its IPO price. Somebody fact check me there. It's been a lost decade for Twitter. Yeah. Um, I think that is, uh, super relevant here.

SPEAKER_112: Hey, Tom Eschbacher is here with us again. He's a senior sales manager at LinkedIn marketing solutions. And we're talking about their amazing report today and startup marketing as well as how to use LinkedIn to grow your startup as an angel investor. I like to see revenue early and often from startups. How can LinkedIn help with that?

SPEAKER_117: Yeah. The short answer is LinkedIn lead gen forms. 89% of our startup advertisers utilize them. And I'll tell you why. Think about all the effort that goes into creating interest within a prospect. You have to nail the value proposition, create compelling content, find them, and then message them with enough frequency so that they engage. You do all that. You get them to your signup page and you know how many of them are going to convert? Just 2%. That's so much value that marketers are failing to capture. And it's a big reason why LinkedIn marketing and specifically LinkedIn lead gen forms are so popular with startups.

SPEAKER_119: So people know a lead gen form lives on LinkedIn. They click one time and boom, the email is sent to the company. By using LinkedIn lead gen forms, you're ensuring they're coming from an audience that you care about.

SPEAKER_117: And then we're pulling the information right from the members profile. So it's great. Your SDRs are going to be thrilled with that info. They're going to want to follow up. That's the improved lead quality. And as you say, Jason, it all takes place in just 2 taps in the LinkedIn news feed.

SPEAKER_112: And so if you would like to get this incredible report, you can go to LinkedIn.com slash this week in startups.

SPEAKER_120: And not only can you get the report for free, you're also going to get $100 off your first marketing campaign from Tom at LinkedIn. Way to go, Tom.

SPEAKER_56: Let's listen to. So, yes, as this was all unfolding this morning as we're recording on Thursday, April 14th, it just so happened that Elon Musk was scheduled to speak at Ted in a fireside chat.

SPEAKER_03: And so we pulled a couple of clips from that to hear some of what you were just saying. Here's a 43 second clip because I we could talk about the free speech part of this for a long time. And we have and we have and we will probably continue to. But what I will say is open source the algorithm.

Jason Calacanis: Yeah.

SPEAKER_68: Yeah. So here is can argue with that.

SPEAKER_59: Right.

SPEAKER_68: I mean, you'd have to be a maniac to argue against. Who could argue with that?

Jason Calacanis: Because if what we if what we don't like about these social media platforms is that they have conflated the algorithm with speech and they are not the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_56: What gets promoted, what gets turned into a bot, what gets amplified in order to get engagement and clicks and money is not speech.

SPEAKER_03: Right. That those are not the same thing. They're technology. And so I think there is something really valuable about what he's saying here in this 43 second clip talking about open sourcing the algorithm.

SPEAKER_124: One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people's tweets. You know, if they're emphasized or de-emphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that that action has been taken. So there's no sort of behind the scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually. Like I think like the code should be on GitHub, you know, so then and so people can look through it and say, like, I see a problem here. I don't I don't agree with this. They can highlight issues. Right. Suggest changes in the same way that you sort of update Linux or signal or something like that, you know?

SPEAKER_28: Yeah. Fantastic.

Chamath Palihapitiya: A fantastic change because as you just astutely pointed out Molly, the algorithm is not designed with, um, society, freedom of speech, uh, or anything in that realm benefit of society.

David Friedberg: It is strictly to increase time on site and usage. Mm hmm. And what we've seen on YouTube, Twitter and other places is that, uh, you know, just take YouTube as the, you know, the best example. You watch a, uh, Joe Rogan video with an actor. And then all of a sudden you're watching a Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris. Okay. Great. Uh, and then you're watching a Ben Shapiro and then you're on Milo Yiannopoulos and then you're on Alex Jones. And then now you're down the rabbit hole to insanity.

SPEAKER_00: And you know, Sam Harris is a personal friend of mine is a genius. Well thought out considered, but let's face it.

David Friedberg: There are people who are part of the intellectual free web, which was like just, uh, amorphous group that, uh, was not even, uh, nobody co-signed joining it.

SPEAKER_131: But, you know, you get an Eric Weinstein or Brett Weinstein, and then Brett Weinstein goes off the deep end and is like anti-vax and yada yada. And it just kind of goes down some rabbit hole and it's in the more outrageous it is.

SPEAKER_63: And then I'll let you reflect on this. Sorry. The more outrageous it is, the longer the engagement. So if you went from Sam Harris on this jumping off point, who is a legitimate scientist, like brilliant individual. I can tell you with massive good intent. Well, you jump off to Eric Weinstein, Brett Weinstein. That's going to keep you down the rabbit hole. Whereas if it took you to another social scientist from Harvard, who was middle of the road. And let's just say more boring and didn't spike your outrage or spike whatever emotion in you.

SPEAKER_00: Well, you wouldn't stay longer. So what the algorithm is doing is just saying, I'm going to make an ABC choice here on what to show you next based on what's going to outrage you, not what's going to educate you.

Chamath Palihapitiya: And that is the fundamental problem with these algorithms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_136: Well, and we should say that not only do the algorithms take people down a more and more radical. Whole they take they create more and more radical takes like you are rewarded for being more divisive.

SPEAKER_56: And when I say rewarded, I mean, you will get more attention. You will get more likes. You will get more engagement. You the creator, right? You the whoever you get more money, which means you get more money. The financial incentive to be more extreme is undeniable. And as a result, you have so many creators who are more and more extreme. And so it's like I'm so frustrated by the Ted conversation. And I don't know if that video will be posted later, but it was the most unsophistic. And I don't mean Elon like I am so frustrated by watching Chris Anderson interview Elon Musk and act like free speech is like an end.

Jason Calacanis: And frankly, to even hear Elon Musk be like, yeah, we should have a world on Twitter where you can disagree where you can say something that people don't like.

SPEAKER_140: Give me a break. Like that's all of Twitter. And I am so frustrated to hear a conversation from Chris Anderson. That's like, well, but if I say I hate spinach, is that hate speech? And then it goes like none of that is what's happening here.

SPEAKER_56: Is technology and financial incentive. Yes.

SPEAKER_88: I didn't. I don't think Chris Anderson is super briefed on this subject or is the most sophisticated interview. I agree with that. Clearly. Also, there could be an access journalism thing going on here where maybe Chris felt like he's got to throw some softballs. Um, to keep access to Elon. I don't know.

David Friedberg: I felt like it wasn't. It wasn't. I agree. It wasn't a great interview. I don't think Chris is super sophisticated on this topic. Um, but I do think, you know, there, there is the issue and it's a valid one of what is the role of these, um, platforms and should they follow the law or should they dictate a new law?

SPEAKER_00: And should they have, and yes, they're private companies, so they can do whatever they want. We know that. And I think there's a group of people who I'll call, you know, OG ACLU always tip towards more freedom of speech, which I would put myself in. Um, and then I think there's a group of people who are saying, well, this is a unique, you know, set of circumstances. It's a private company. Right.

David Friedberg: Therefore they can take a different approach, which is not the law, but it is what they want the service to be. And so if somebody wants to, you know, say somebody is an idiot, there's nothing wrong with saying somebody is an idiot. You think they're an idiot. And then there's the law. Doxing is clearly against the law.

SPEAKER_00: Now we've actually made a law about that. Right. I think there is legislation. Revenge porn. There's now laws about that. So the law trails the reality. And now I think what's happening is we're starting to look at what happens online and saying, okay, freedom of speech as outlined, you know, in the founding papers of the society we've created is now up against a different thing, right? Like freedom of speech, where somebody goes to a town square stands on a soapbox or an apple box and says what they believe slightly different than they send a tweet.

David Friedberg: It goes to everybody into trends and then some algorithm did it and did it around the concept of rage and all of a sudden somebody has been slandered or doxed or brigade and really saying. So we were kind of adapting the law to that. And so that I think will be what this is about. And he made a good point about, you know, right now we have Zuckerberg controlling and Zuckerberg the 14th will control Facebook forever the way super voting shares are.

SPEAKER_88: And in this case, I think you want is no intention of owning all of Twitter. He would like to have it, you know, be owned by which when he said very clearly, which I think was other people's fears, like, is he going to be the one deciding and editing each tweet? I think he wants it to be more open sourced.

SPEAKER_30: And so I believe I take him at his word when he says that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_154: Okay, baby, it's 2022. And I'm back. I'm going to events. I'm going to conferences. I'm hanging out with my peeps. And you know what, I got to look good tight as right.

Chamath Palihapitiya: So I've been using Indochino, which makes high quality custom fitted suits, shirts, casual wear and more. And with Indochino, you can customize everything from suits and shirts to chinos and bomber jackets at surprisingly affordable prices. So you can get a wardrobe personalized to your style and taste without spending a fortune. Every piece is made to your exact measurements. And you can customize every little detail of your suit fabric lapel monogram. And I love the statement linings because when I fold my jacket over the chair, I always do it inside out. When you put it inside out, you know what, the outside of your jacket doesn't get any stains on it. If somebody happens to spill or whatever, you're going to create the suit that fits you and your style perfectly. And the best part Indochino suits started just $429 and shirts for $79 with all the customization included. So get yourself a style edit that sets the tone for the rest of the year with Indochino. You can get $50 off any purchase of $399 or more by using the promo code TWIST at Indochino.com. That's $50 off a purchase of $399 or more at Indochino.com.

SPEAKER_155: Use that promo code TWIST.

SPEAKER_03: Let's see. The next clip is Elon talking about the challenge of increasing public trust in Twitter and his intent. Great.

SPEAKER_124: Civilizational risk is decreased if Twitter, the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. And I'm not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it. The intent is to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law. It's definitely not from the standpoint of letting me figure out how to monopolize or maximize my ownership of Twitter. But we'll try to bring along as many shoulders as we as we're allowed to. This is not a way to sort of make money. Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. But you've described yourself. I don't care about the economics at all.

SPEAKER_160: I mean, ironically, I think Elon Musk is talking about the Internet.

Jason Calacanis: I think like what's so weird about this is that at the end of the day, Twitter, we're in this position for a lot of reasons. Twitter isn't a company and ultimately an asset. And like if it goes away or it becomes a thing that people don't want or whatever, like it's so small in relative terms. It's so US centric that there's a part of me that's just like, all right, whatever, like buy and sell Twitter. People will go somewhere else. Some other thing will come into its place. Like the idea that it's that crucial is and I'm not saying it's not crucial, right? I was literally like on Twitter while this conversation was happening, but it's also like we have that platform.

SPEAKER_51: We have a maximally available platform for the world. It's the Internet.

SPEAKER_85: Yeah, and I think the counter to that that some people have is that the gatekeepers have been are there.

David Friedberg: There are a small cohort of gatekeepers who are acting in unison now. And so when they decided to de-platform Alex Jones, something I back 100%. The guy's a scumbag. He's the most evil person on the planet in my mind to go after the parents of deceased children and say it was a false flag so he can sell more meal kits for preppers.

SPEAKER_88: I mean, this is for me, the most, the pure definition of evil is to increase the suffering of a parent who lost a child, right?

David Friedberg: It's just who would want Alex Jones on their platform and Alex Jones de-platformed over every single platform. And I think correctly so. And now Alex Jones has a fraction of the reach he had and you're correct. He can still exist on his own website, but they did a great job of getting that scumbag off of the public square. And I think what absolutists of free speech think is okay, great. You got rid of him and then who's next, who's next, who's next, and then who's making these decisions.

SPEAKER_63: So that's what the people on, I think the right or the strong free speech, which I'll call like the OG free speech movement feels like is at play here.

SPEAKER_88: You can, we can debate it, but at the end of the day, like you said, the internet is an open platform. There are 20 different platforms. They all just happened to be in unison on this. And in fact, you saw it go down into the payments layer. So you also had it was with the truckers, a bunch of platforms that would also be doing funding canceled them out. So I think what people are feeling is on the right. And I am a libertarian moderate. I think it's pretty obvious, uh, you know, where my politics lie. I hate politics. I think they're all grifters and I'm kind of, uh, I guess people describe me as a libertarian, but putting it all aside.

David Friedberg: I think people are, are sort of on the right feeling. Feeling that there is a cohort of people on the left, coastal elites who control these companies who can disappear. People from the financial stack, the server stack, you know, domain stack, and obviously the publishing stack.

SPEAKER_88: That's what I think what they're feeling. Those are the people probably cheering this on from the other side, but I don't think that's Elon, but I know that's not Elon. Elon cares about freedom of speech, uh, full stop. And he thinks Twitter is an important square for that. And he, uh, obviously loves and understands the product with 80 million people. There's probably nobody who is, I'm trying to think of somebody who's mastered Twitter more in their domain. There's no CEO obviously who's mastered Twitter more. Is there somebody else who's mastered Twitter as a communication platform? I mean, he's driven massive sales for Tesla on it. So, uh, I can't think of, I can't think of a better person who own it or run it.

SPEAKER_169: Ryan Breslow.

SPEAKER_170: Ryan Breslow, of course, has done a pretty good job.

SPEAKER_79: That's a good one, Nick. Producer Nick coming in with a strong one. I mean, uh, and then on the left people, what, I mean, tell us what the.

SPEAKER_51: I don't, I just think it's a red herring to make this. I think it is a red herring to make this a political issue or even an issue of free speech. Because the fact is that yes, these guys styled themselves as free speech radicals.

Jason Calacanis: And as a result, they implemented zero controls on these platforms all the way back from the beginning, right? None.

SPEAKER_56: And those zero controls included the bots, the spamming, the brigading. Yup. And then ultimately they created and get in. They created technology and algorithms that prioritize divisive speech and that created. Literally created the extreme personalities that we're seeing right now on these platforms who are then getting. On the left and the right. Right. We saw it on the left too. Sure. Like the, it enabled a group of people on the left. But again, that is a red herring. Right. That is a red herring. We prioritize extremes. We prioritize. They prioritized extremes. It does not matter. Yeah. They prioritized extremes because it got engagement. For profit. For profit. And then as a result, you had platforms that were a complete show. You had, you know, for lack of a more sensitive phrase, the inmates running the asylum. So then you had a situation where you had to try to put some inmates back in cages and they staged a coup. Like it is not a, it is an absolute, it is falling into the framing trap to say that this is somehow about free speech or that it's somehow is about the right or the left. When the truth is it's about disinformation that causes harm in the real world. It's about coordinated harassment, bot campaigns and propaganda. Yeah. And it always has been a technology problem that any of these platforms could have tackled at any time. I tweeted today that like. But they didn't because they care about money. Because they care about money. Because they care about money. Yeah. Jack is a hundred percent right to be on Twitter right now saying, I, this is partly my fault. I helped centralize debate and conversation on the internet into one of these platforms. But what he misses is that if there had been clear rules all along that applied equally to everyone and that there had, that there had never been the creation of algorithms that prioritize and created extreme monsters, right? Like they literally created these monsters because they made so much money that they wouldn't be in a position where they then had to try to like, oh crap, overcorrect. Maybe deep platform the monsters that they themselves created. Yep. But I'm not ever going to engage in the idea that this is somehow actually about free speech. It's about technology and capitalism.

SPEAKER_154: Listen, lots of founders are loosey goosey with their personal phone numbers. We all know this. They put it in company documents. They use it for sales calls. It's an emails. It's a nightmare because you don't know who's calling, right? The sales executive gets a phone call. Is it somebody at your kid's school with an emergency or is it a sales prospect?

Chamath Palihapitiya: Well, with open phone, you're going to be able to create business phone numbers for you and your team. And it works through an app on your smartphone or your desktop, whichever you prefer. And it's super easy. You pick a number, you install the app and you're done. There's no need to carry two phones like I did back in the day.

David Friedberg: And here's a feature you're going to love. You know how you can create a shared email for customer support? People have like VIP at their company name or support at their company name. What if you did that for a phone number?

Chamath Palihapitiya: And what if that phone number would ring multiple employees? And then whoever picks it up first gets it, right? So open phone is already affordable at a starting price of just $10 a month per user. Wow. It's so affordable. But twist listeners get an even better deal.

SPEAKER_63: 20% off any plan for your first six months by signing up at open phone dot co slash twist. And if you have existing numbers with another service, guess what?

Chamath Palihapitiya: Open phone will port them over easy, easy lemon squeezy O P E N P H O N E dot co slash twist today. And Elon owning it would mean or Elon controlling it or having a controlling interest in it is he's

SPEAKER_88: going to make the decisions based on his version or his beliefs in free speech, not an economics because it's not going to move the needle economically for him. Right.

SPEAKER_03: And I do also, by the way, side note, just an insane position to be in. He's like, I don't like how my favorite toy is operating. So I'm buying in like, that is a whole other conversation, which is bonkers.

SPEAKER_63: Uh, I'm not so sure.

David Friedberg: I would take the opposite of that, which is, you know, if I'm willing to bet my own capital and take a big risk in order to see something, you know, that I think is important to society get better. And it's what, what is Twitter in terms of usage, the 10th or 20th largest, you know, site in this realm.

SPEAKER_63: Yeah. Um, he believes if he can buy the 10th and make it the number one or make it the best example, I think it's going to be for the bet. I mean, nothing's getting better on these platforms. Let's be honest. I mean, all the leaked papers from Instagram and, you know, Instagram's changing nothing. So the, the idea that Zuckerberg would ever change anything and do it for the good of society.

SPEAKER_115: Zuckerberg is going to do nothing for the good of societies only going to make whatever the right decision is for Mark Zuckerberg, the 14th. Yep.

SPEAKER_63: Elon is getting us to be a multi planetary species, credibly, and has done more for carbon emissions and electric vehicles and sustainability than any other human in history. 100%. So I'll look at the track record of Elon and what he has done publicly and what he is saying.

SPEAKER_00: And I think as peculiar and unique of a human being as Elon is to some people or as scary as it is for some people as triggering as it might be for the richest person to come in and buy their favorite platform. The truth is, if you know, putting aside that we're very close friends, Elon has done more. And he's done it openly and publicly for making us multi planetary and EVs and he cares about free speech. I think he'll actually do what he did in EVs, which you can certainly appreciate for freedom of for freedom of speech and fairness on the platform. His platform for the platform is make the algorithm open source.

SPEAKER_63: If people are being shadow banned or whatever, just make it clear for people. I think his plan is credible. And I think if you open the API up again, and you allow this was one of the critical financial decisions to your point, they shut off the API. And if you remember when you did Twitter, I remember having these talks with them and he said, we have to make our own client for iOS. And I said why I've got tweet deck I got this thing I got this one. Yeah, it's better that there's different ways to interpret the data. And he was like, Yeah, but it's bad for us as a company when you know your mom or your uncle gets on Twitter and they type in Twitter and they get 17 different clients. It's 17 different experiences we need to have one experience so that it can grow and keep up with Facebook. Okay, that's a legitimate assessment of the confusion it can cause. But the reality is, if I could download an Instagram client or a Facebook client or Twitter client that interpreted that data without the algorithm or a better algorithm or took out the inspiration and other things that were, you know, pernicious for young girls to see. That would be a pretty much better world. And I think that should be high on the list as well as decoupling the data set from what's going on here.

David Friedberg: And I think defaults matter to Elon will in 10 seconds, because I know the self driving team at Tesla. Like I've literally met them. I've spent time with them. I've seen what they're working on.

SPEAKER_00: I won't talk about it specifically, but watching that AI team and the level of care they're putting into the edge cases. Like I've seen this up close. That team is the greatest AI team in the world right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Like this deep mind and then there's a Tesla team. Those are the two greatest teams in the world. They literally in a weekend could solve the bot problem. They could solve the brigading problem. Mm hmm. They could solve it. And I kid you not 48 hours. So then you have to ask yourself, well, why the didn't Twitter solve it?

SPEAKER_137: I do. And the answer is pretty obvious. It didn't make money.

SPEAKER_188: Bots brigading anonymous accounts equal more money. Mm hmm. Elon's going to come in there and in 10 seconds, get rid of the Bitcoin problem, the spamming problem, the brigading problem. And he can credibly do it because if you can figure out, hey, that's a paper bag flying in the wind, not a bicyclist.

SPEAKER_63: You can figure out when somebody is being brigaded. It's like fairly obvious. If you just looked at the IP addresses, if you looked at who was talking to each other, who were friends with each other from the accounts.

David Friedberg: And then all of a sudden 50 people from the same IP range or whatever commonality go into Molly woods replies, and then they use the following set of words, B word, C word, whatever words they use when they attack a woman.

SPEAKER_01: Beep. That would end. Yeah.

SPEAKER_56: Like this is where I should make it crystal clear that I 100% support and love the idea of Elon coming into Twitter, open sourcing the algorithm, making it crystal clear what's happening on the platform, stripping away the financial incentives that create extreme behavior and spam and crime and all of that. I have no beef with that whatsoever. I think that's a great plan. Yeah. Like, I think that is a great plan. I think two things can be true at the same time. One public. If it is a town square, it's concerning that it's up for sale. Right? So we should let, we should let go of a couple of things. One, we should let go of the idea that Twitter is a town square or the only one that can ever exist, because clearly it's a company that can be bought. And two, we should let go of the idea that this is somehow. And I actually think when you listen to Elon Musk speak about what he wants to accomplish here. He is saying the same thing. We should let go of the idea that this is somehow a conversation about free speech in the sense that it will restore the ability of people to come on and say whatever they want and do all the harm that they want to do. Because that's not what I hear him saying. What I hear him saying is this needs to be an honest broker. Twitter. Yeah. Twitter needs to be an honest broker of conversation and that right now it's not. And it's not. This is not I'm not this is not an anti Elon rant.

SPEAKER_195: Right?

David Friedberg: Like, I mean, we just agreed that none of these platforms are an honest broker of information. Exactly. Yeah, they're all doing it for financial incentive.

SPEAKER_00: So if he wants to make it in more of a public utility, that it is a fair game, and that you have controls, which Jack and Elon are good friends as well or associates.

David Friedberg: Obviously, you see them interacting on Twitter, don't need to be a genius to figure that out. I think Jack's vision of where he wanted to take Twitter is shared, because Jack is a radical free speech in his belief, and he is somebody who believes that more control should be given.

SPEAKER_00: But he was in this terrible position where the activists and the previous activists investors were like, make it grow.

David Friedberg: Now, if you're under the pressure of make it grow, and bots are 20% of the growth, and spam accounts are 20% of the growth. And you're looking at 40% of the growth or accounts that you can't even account for.

SPEAKER_07: And there are x percentage of the tweets and activity.

SPEAKER_63: If you got rid of all of them, all of a sudden, you're going to take this massive hit in monthly active users, and you're number 10 on the list of monthly active users. Now you're number 20. Guess what? Now you're fired as CEO, because you only own 2% of the company. Mm hmm. The end. That was the prisoner's dilemma Jack was in. People don't really know that. I know it. Other people know it. But you know, the Twitter has a hard time growing.

SPEAKER_201: I think for the great big great. How do you say brigading? Brigading. Brigading. I'm sorry. I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_203: How do you say brigading? How do you say brigading?

SPEAKER_46: I'm on like a very weird sleep schedule and my dyslexia is going crazy. Anyway, brigading problem.

SPEAKER_63: I think what they should do is when you're somebody who's been brigaded, they should build an algorithm and offer it up to you.

Chamath Palihapitiya: That's the anti brigading algorithm.

SPEAKER_00: So once you're brigaded, if they said, we highly recommend you put on only your followers can reply by by default, would you like to make this your default Molly?

SPEAKER_63: Whoever's getting brigaded on a regular basis, they could have actually solved the problem. Why don't they solve the brigading problem? To solve the brigading problem, lowers engagement. Yep.

SPEAKER_07: And it lowers the scumbags, the fieriness, the outrage machine. That is what build which was one of Twitter's few growth areas.

SPEAKER_208: Brigading is nothing to do with free speech, which has to do with growth.

SPEAKER_209: Yes. But you could stop brigading and you could make the place.

Chamath Palihapitiya: I guarantee you if Elon controlled Twitter, it would be 100 times more sustainable, delightful, less toxic for people who are currently being brigaded.

SPEAKER_63: And that's trans people, women, people of color, he would solve that problem in 10 seconds because the easiest problem to solve in the world. As you pointed out, as we've kind of beaten to death here, it's an economics based decision, totally not a moral based or ethics based decision. He's going to make that decision based on moral and ethics, which is the scumbag shouldn't be allowed on the platform. And he's a proponent of verifying people right now. What is verification about on the system? It's about anointing. It's about anointing celebrities, journalists, notable people in order to get them to feel special when they use the product. Great.

SPEAKER_07: They get the blue check marks. Now we give light blue to anybody who puts in their credit card. And we put the name of the credit card. This was my pitch from 10 years ago. I shared the tweets with my old blog post on it.

David Friedberg: If they made the very and obviously Elon is very supportive of the same idea. And I think he came to it himself. I don't think he's got it from me, which is verification should be available to everybody.

SPEAKER_07: If you have a verified Twitter then and if you had multiple clients, Molly would could come on and say, you know, I'm being particularly harassed right now.

SPEAKER_00: And they got rid of a lot of the bots, but there's still some scumbags left on the service. I'm going to check the box that I want verified by Twitter anointed and light blue verified by a credit card. That's not a burner card. And the name on the card and the type of card. Visa. Visa. J.M. Calacanis was the name of this card. And yes, that can be faked. But it's it's work to fake is on my profile page verified how verified by a phone number verified by an email and verified by a credit card that had this name on it.

SPEAKER_07: If you put up those roadblocks to being verified and then if it costs 10 bucks or 100 bucks a year or 50 bucks a year, whatever, you know, half the price of Spotify. Is it worth it for people to pay for that? Of course it is. And does everybody have to pay? No, you can be free.

SPEAKER_00: But then when Molly would says I'm being brigaded, whoever's being brigaded turns you off.

David Friedberg: Now you've got a revenue stream that I think would generate 300, 400, 500 million dollars out of the gate. Yep. But it wouldn't do the growth thing. It would inhibit growth.

SPEAKER_136: Imagine, right. I mean, there's even a magical universe in which if if the economics are not in play here, you're Wikipedia.

Jason Calacanis: Like I tell people all the time that Wikipedia is actually my most trusted news source like Wikipedia and weirdly Reddit, right? Like when you have competing incentives that are about like Wikipedia is devoted to truth and not money making. So can it be gamed occasionally? Sure. Will you go there like 10 minutes of every day? Is it totally inaccurate until it gets fixed? Possibly. But at the end of the day, the incentives for Wikipedia are truth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_51: And so if that and like, I'm so fine with the conversation where we say the incentive for Twitter should be truth and it should be on meddled with conversation. I'm like here for that. I'm all right. Let's totally just serve for that.

SPEAKER_88: Look, we, I think we've beaten to death what's going on in terms of free speech.

SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then I see in our notes, not as long as you keep saying it, but okay, fine. Wait, what's that? Not as long as you keep saying free speech, but okay, fine.

SPEAKER_07: Well, whatever I, uh, what's, what would be your better term for a pro a platform run based on transparency as opposed to financial incentive and growth incentives?

SPEAKER_63: Get neutral, neutral, neutral platforms, neutral platform. Yeah. Okay. So let's look at what's going on with the cap table. I think, you know, a lot of times when you want to understand what's happening, math is a good place to go.

David Friedberg: And, uh, if you look at Twitter's largest shareholders, obviously people talked about Elon owning 9.2% at this point, which he's basically said in the letter he would liquidate if he wasn't able to buy it, which I think would make sense. Why have him sitting around, um, on the cap table if he wasn't, uh, you know, um, gonna buy it.

SPEAKER_88: Vanguard 8.8%, Morgan Stanley 8.4%, BlackRock 6.5%, State Street Capital, Street, Street Corp 4.5%. So it's institutions own this company.

David Friedberg: And then if you look, those companies also have large holdings in Tesla, which is not uncommon. Vanguard and BlackRock are both large, uh, shareholders in Tesla. They own a hundred billion combined. So if Vanguard and BlackRock are roughly 13% of Twitter and have a hundred billion, they're obviously familiar with Elon's work.

SPEAKER_63: And so I think you'll have a series of people who would very much shareholders in Twitter would very much like it to be an Elon Musk back company. Because I think they would see, you know, a company that for, I think Twitter has been public for close to a decade.

David Friedberg: Now it ended being a public company at 40 some odd dollars a share.

SPEAKER_131: If my memory serves me correctly, may have gone out at 45 or peak somewhere in, you know, a little bit above that on the first day trading and it closed at $41. And now it's trading or it's been trading when, with Elon involved as an activist shareholder at between 38 and 45.

SPEAKER_88: In fact, yeah, I can confirm right now. Closed at 41. Closed at 41.

SPEAKER_131: So in other words, if you invested in this company 10 years ago, you've made $0 while the stock market has ripped, ripped.

SPEAKER_234: So if you're a shareholder here. So you think they do vote for it?

SPEAKER_131: I mean, you have to be a moron not to vote for it. The most talented CEO on the planet. The most talented product CEO on the planet. You know, uh, only comparable really to Steve Jobs. Airbnb founders. I mean, if I'm being objective here, if you just look at the best products in the world, whether it's.

SPEAKER_88: You know, the space X's rockets, the Tesla autopilot, Tesla itself, Tesla cars. And, um, now Starlink, those products are game changers. Twitter is the opposite of a game changing product. I think like Elon managing Twitter's product team and, uh, you know, them answering to him.

SPEAKER_239: It's literally like Steve jobs managing an ice cream stand.

SPEAKER_221: Steve jobs like that. And that's his slow mind. Everybody like. It was like Steve jobs.

SPEAKER_225: Like goes to. That's amazing. And he's like, okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_241: Explain to me. You know what? I'm not buying this. This is not this.

SPEAKER_65: Exactly. It's like riley. Coaching. Like a junior varsity team in high school. You know, it's like, no, but literally let's take the Steve jobs ice cream analogy. Steve jobs walk in.

SPEAKER_63: He tastes the ice cream. He'd say, okay, show me the menu. Okay. What's the competition? And he'd be like, okay, you have four flavors. Okay. For literally four flavors. And you don't have waffle cones, right? The place with the line down the street's got waffle cones and 40 flavors. Yeah. Great.

SPEAKER_131: We're going to have 50 flavors and we're going to have four types of waffle cones.

SPEAKER_51: Yep.

SPEAKER_244: And I'm going to sleep on the floor for three months until you have that until you have made all the three months until you idiots understand what's going on here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_246: If Twitter is the clown car, could it be like, uh, Max Verstappen driving the clown car? Do you want to really tie the analogies together?

SPEAKER_247: I don't even know who Max Verstappen is. Oh yeah. You're too smart for us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_249: That's way too, way too niche. Way too niche.

David Friedberg: Anyway. Um, like literally like this would be like literally Elon or Steve jobs going to the ice cream store every Sunday, looking at the menu, looking at the menu, looking at the customers, talk to the customers. Hey, um, why are you in line for this place? Oh, the toppings, right? Which topping? Oh, they have Snickers. They crush the Snickers bars and they go back to the place. Like, what do you have? And they're like, Oh, we have granola. Okay. Put the granola in the garbage. Get Snickers bars.

Chamath Palihapitiya: What are the other top five candy bars? Mars bar. What? Peanut M&Ms. Yeah. Okay. Just do me a favor. Go to the Walgreens, get the five best selling candies, butcher them, break them up, put them in a bucket and then three toppings for $1. Let's go. Yeah. It's literally that's the amount of mental energy we take to fix Twitter.

SPEAKER_125: Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_07: 98% of people want a goddamn edit button. Facebook's had an edit button for 10 years. LinkedIn's had an edit button for 10 years.

SPEAKER_01: You morons can't figure out the edit button. You morons are too self important to try to have an edit button.

Jason Calacanis: Like, give me a break.

SPEAKER_254: I'm way too precious.

Jason Calacanis: It's 100% like Nick just said in our chat. He's like, yes, there is a chance. He fixes everything, turns it around, creates a recurring revenue stream, not based on engagement and brings it public in. Or there's a chance that he. $450 million. $450 million. $450 million. Or he takes it private and keeps it private. And it's a Wikipedia, right? It's not.

SPEAKER_218: Yeah.

SPEAKER_262: Those are the two viable scenarios. Those are totally two viable scenarios. Like everything.

SPEAKER_263: The great part of it be good.

SPEAKER_140: Sorry. Everything else is just sort of noise. Like it's a company. It can be taken private. I mean, he would probably, he would run it better.

Jason Calacanis: And frankly, like it should puncture Jack's bubble a little bit in terms of everything. He's such a great operator. Like Elon, just show us all the ways that the man did not care about running a business here.

SPEAKER_00: I'll be, I'll be, I can be a little more charitable for Jack. I think Jack was in an inevitable position of having not enough control of the company. And the activist shareholders who came before Elon's motivation was double the stock price. And the only, and they thought doubling the stock price meant doubling the user base.

SPEAKER_68: But that's just, isn't that just a business incentive?

SPEAKER_56: Always. That's always going to be a business incentive. If you're a venture backdoor, you're public. Short-term versus long-term.

SPEAKER_07: Yeah. That's all that markets care about. Here's the thing. Jack was under short-term pressure and had another company to run.

SPEAKER_79: And Elon has five other companies to run. All right. But he has no economic pressure here.

SPEAKER_07: He can take a 10 year review of this. And I think really, if you look at the, if we, if we're talking about a Twitter turnaround, it's going to, you do have to take a decade long approach. And the first three or four years, it's going to be a collapse in the user count. And the collapse in the user count will be 20% less users for a year or two.

David Friedberg: As the bots are run out of the system, as the spam bots, you know, the scumbags are removed from the system.

SPEAKER_07: 20% decline in users and a hundred percent increase in the delightfulness and less toxicity of the platform. Mm-hmm. And more people be able to say, you know what, I'm a celebrity. I actually enjoy being on this platform. Because if you're a celebrity and they defaulted celebrities, what if they just decided on mass to default all blue check marks to, um, only replies from followers.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Mm-hmm. Or mutual fault or just all from followers.

SPEAKER_07: Now, when you, when somebody says something obnoxious, you say, remove from my follower list. And you say why, like you build a tool that says, I'm removing this person because they said something toxic. I remove this person because they replied with spam. Now you're controlling your experience. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_63: And then all of a sudden, Justin Bieber and, wow, I never even thought about this one, but wow, this is a f***ing great idea. I have to tell my friend. But if you just defaulted blue check marks and you tell them. Yeah. You're on your, only your followers can reply. We decided this would be the better, this would improve your experience. Now, this whole idea that Twitter was a place for people who hate you to be the majority of your replies goes away. And when they do reply, you say, don't let this person on. Don't let this person follow me. And then it said, for how many days would you like to time out them? And it says, I'm going to time them out for 60 days. Now they get a message. You've been, because of this tweet, you can't reply to this person for 60 days. So I get to be Twitter. I get to be the decider. Molly Wood gets to decide. Mm-hmm. If you gave that control to Tom Hanks's, you know, or Katy Perry's social media team. Now they're in control of educating people as to what's allowed in Tom Cruise's or Tom Petty. I'm sorry, rest in peace. Tom Hanks's, you know, replies. There are common sense ideas here that have not been implemented because of incompetence, elitism, and a growth incentive. And a growth incentive. Yeah, exactly. Because the other thing you would have to.

SPEAKER_284: Maybe in reverse order.

Jason Calacanis: The thing you would have to do on the back end is make sure that that person can't just like create another account immediately. Right? It goes hand in hand with your verification idea. Exactly. Like without that real person verification, you can't do anything about somebody just creating a new account and coming right back again. With that verification, you can.

SPEAKER_56: Like suddenly you have a platform based on real people with some accountability.

SPEAKER_88: Guess which two platforms have a real name policy.

SPEAKER_287: I think there's like a new one. That's so good and interesting. Well, no, no. Forget about mine. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_209: I was like, there's two others that have this LinkedIn and Facebook. Yeah. They don't seem to have a problem with growth. Quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_07: Well, they have almost 800 million members.

SPEAKER_01: Facebook is the largest social media platform ever created. They both have a real names policy. Facebook does have a big problem with fake accounts. They do actually have that.

SPEAKER_137: They have a problem with fake accounts that is nowhere comparable to Twitter's. The majority of your experience is anonymous accounts on Twitter. I would, I would suspect Molly.

SPEAKER_292: Oh, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_294: My Twitter's pretty good. Okay.

SPEAKER_63: But if you, okay. I would say this of people replying to you with obnoxious. Misogynistic. Oh yeah. Then they're like an egg. Yeah, totally. What percentage are anonymous? Right.

SPEAKER_136: Versus real names.

SPEAKER_298: Like I assume all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_136: Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, there, there were many, many, many ways to fix it again.

SPEAKER_56: And this is sort of what I was saying on Twitter today. Like there were many ways to fix this all along so that you never had to get in a position

SPEAKER_03: where you have incentivized so much extreme behavior that you effectively have to overcorrect. And then people who have never been, you know, had any accountability or, or felt censored in their lives, lose their and freak out about it. You know? All right. Anyway, should we do some startup news on our This Week in Startup show?

SPEAKER_188: I would love to do a startup of the day or we live in the public. These are two of my favorite features that I love.

SPEAKER_07: We live in the future. I, you may not know this Molly, but, uh, I am floating for the This Week in Startup's production company, a new show hosted by Molly Wood and Jacob. Hey, this is going to be one of our net.

David Friedberg: We got nothing but time. I want to spin out. We live in the future as a, uh, and I'm talking to my, uh, I'm talking to my Hollywood representatives. We live in the future. I have the trademarks. I have the domain names. I want to do. We live in the future as my own. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_256: Netflix show with you where we go on field trips and stuff and like try stuff out. We go on field trips.

SPEAKER_00: We just take two weeks off from the show. We bank a couple episodes and we go throw you into a VTOL and we let you do a VTOL ride.

SPEAKER_42: I'll watch. Love it. I'll do all. I will do it all. Then, you know, we have you go on blue origin to space. Basically you do the risky. I stay on the ground and comment.

SPEAKER_305: There's Molly. Awesome. Going into space. There's Molly on a Zeppelin with Sergey Brin. There's Molly vomiting in our video again.

SPEAKER_03: I'm not doing it, but. I love this stuff. Honestly, I was about to go find, I did this video years ago of this mind controlled.

Jason Calacanis: I tried out a mind controlled skateboard that involves like, yeah, these crazy guys in Austin Worley. I'll find it anyway. Like it involved putting on the dumb like slime all over my scalp and this weird headphone headset thing. And I had this producer who was like, what I love about Molly is she's willing to look like a total idiot for the sake of technology on any video. And I was like, yes, please let's go. I'll vomit every week if need be. Anyway. Yes.

SPEAKER_10: We live in the future. Here's a pilot. We're in this car when this happened because it would have made a great episode. This is the greatest thing ever. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_310: So. What are we seeing? You're seeing this video.

SPEAKER_40: Audio listeners who are not on youtube.com sites this weekend or not using Spotify's new video. You should be all of that.

SPEAKER_03: So what we're seeing is a police officer who has pulled over a vehicle on the streets of San Francisco and is now approaching the vehicle and is essentially realizing live

SPEAKER_140: before our very eyes. Oh my freaking God, there's no one in that car. And it runs. And now the car is taken off. So he's got a runner. He's got a runner and it's an autonomous vehicle. So the car bolts and then stops, pulls over and stops and everybody's like, what the hell? And then the police car pulls up behind it again. What? Gets out of the car. Presumably thinking I am being punked so hard at this point. Gets back up. So great. Brings another cop with him. This is great. But what the car was effectively doing, at least according to Cruz. So this is police pulling over a Cruz autonomous vehicle with no driver.

SPEAKER_56: Is that the car was moving out of the intersection into a safer spot. Yes.

SPEAKER_318: Which is.

SPEAKER_56: After being pulled over.

SPEAKER_00: This is that moment, Molly, when you've getting, getting pulled over by the police that you're like, you know, you have that scary moment where like, am I supposed to pull over on the, the exit ramp? And how do I signal to the police officer? I'm not a runner. I don't know if you've had this experience because you tend to, well, be liberal with your use of the accelerator, uh, pedal. Accurate. When you, have you had that experience when you get pulled over and you're like, how

Chamath Palihapitiya: do I signal that I'm not trying to run?

SPEAKER_03: And where do I go? Yeah. I mean, I will say I have only been pulled over two times in my entire life. Okay. Despite being a somewhat inveterate speeder, cause I live in Oakland and everybody actually

SPEAKER_10: is driving way faster than I am. Um. And doing donuts. I like think I'm going fast, but I'm really not going fast.

SPEAKER_312: But it is true. You're like, okay, I'm just trying to find a good place in the hub to stop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_329: That's all the cruise was doing.

SPEAKER_312: And that's all the cruise was doing.

SPEAKER_140: And so now we're in this position where again, like everything has moved so much faster. We live in the future and cops are like, crap, we need some training on how to interact with autonomous vehicles who have made some sort of a mistake. Also, is the car smart enough to see that police lights are behind it and pull over? Like that's actually amazing.

SPEAKER_07: Well, they have video cameras on there. They should know. They should have an AI, uh, little line of code. If flashing lights alert a remote monitor, they have remote monitoring all these cars. And in fact, we had cruise CEO, Kyle Voigt on the program just recently in March in episode 1404. Here's a 22 second clip of Kyle talking about just this.

SPEAKER_330: And at the state level in most States, the equivalent of the DMV or department of motor vehicles, um, does permitting and registrations for vehicles. And so in California, they have a program for self-driving cars. So even working closely with the state, um, and making sure at least people in the city of San Francisco, like first responders and police departments and other people know how to interact with AVs.

SPEAKER_332: I mean, I just think that this is like such a fascinating development.

Jason Calacanis: Cruise is working on this. They know that this is gonna like somehow an autonomous car is gonna violate a traffic law.

SPEAKER_10: And they're, well, here's what probably happened.

SPEAKER_88: They probably told all police officers this was happening. They sent the memo and you know, probably 10% of the police actually read it.

SPEAKER_131: Like you, you, you can't expect everybody who's working on the front lines to know everything that's going on. And now that, you know, they'll have an extra meeting about this, but no harm, no foul, but we will have.

SPEAKER_88: Amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_42: I mean, it would have been better if like a second and third car surrounded it.

SPEAKER_340: And you had like four police cop cars surrounding the car with guns drawn. You know, it is asking the AI to get out of the car.

SPEAKER_14: Like the video is so, it's just magical comedy.

SPEAKER_03: Like the real, you got it. If you didn't see it live or have you haven't watched the video, you gotta see it. Cause when he looks into the car and there's no one there. Let me explain to people.

SPEAKER_344: And he's like, and then it takes off.

David Friedberg: Let me do a public service announcement for anybody who doesn't know what they're doing. A traffic stop. Number one, the second you're getting pulled over, you hit your hazard lights. Now your hazard lights are blinking.

SPEAKER_182: You've sent a communication to the police. You understand you're being pulled over.

SPEAKER_07: Now you're going to put your blinker on and slowly change lanes to the right hand lane.

SPEAKER_00: You're going to put your card exactly whatever the speed limit is 6555. You're at exactly that speed limit. Boom. And you are going to wait for a safe place to pull over. Typically, that is not the highway unless there happens to be a giant full size place for you to pull over.

SPEAKER_63: Under no circumstances are you stopping in the right hand lane. But if there is a double wide, you know, place for you to stop, that's fine. But you're most likely going to stay 55 miles an hour and pull over at the next exit. When you get off the exit, you're going to make a right turn. You're going to open both your windows, turn off your radio, listen for instructions from the officers.

David Friedberg: The officers will tell you, you know, where they want you to stop. If not, you're just going to pull over directly when you get off that exit because it's all likelihood not going to be a dangerous place. And you just pull over.

SPEAKER_07: Put your hands at 10 and 2 right at the top of the steering wheel. Do not go in your glove compartment while the police officer is coming.

SPEAKER_00: You can go if your police officer is still pulling over, you can get your paperwork ready and put it up there and close the glove box. That's fine.

David Friedberg: But opening the glove box is something you do at the request of the police officer. That could be something that could trigger them that you're getting weapons. So just be careful there.

SPEAKER_07: Then you say yes, officer. No officer. I understand officer. That's it. Yes, officer. No officer. I understand officer. I'm sorry, officer. You can throw in if you want to get out of the ticket. Do not get into it with an officer in that situation because they're scarier than you are.

David Friedberg: Because that is how most cops, if they are going to get killed in the line of duty, the one out of 100 times they were one out of 1000 times they pull somebody over. It could be somebody who's a felon who's on the run, who has 8,000 pounds of meth in the trunk and shooting a cop is better than going back to jail for 20 years.

SPEAKER_63: They're scarier than you. So just make it completely.

SPEAKER_88: Less, uh, charged than it needs to be. That's your job as being someone being pulled. The end. Mm hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: All that. And I would, well, all that, and I would urge you to look at the chat for all the people of color being like, uh huh. Those are pretty different rules for people of color.

SPEAKER_353: Like who are going to sometimes it's not even going to matter.

SPEAKER_355: Well, yeah, I, I understand that response.

SPEAKER_305: I just think that's a fair response and we should acknowledge it. It's a super fair response. More than fair. I mean, more than fair response. And it makes my instructions even more important, which is a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_63: You have the right to be scared and a hundred percent. They have the right to be scared. And a lot of times the misunderstanding come from two people who are terrorized of the same thing.

SPEAKER_209: One being shot by the police to being shot by a criminal. That's what makes these stops so toxic at times. And sure. Could they be a cop who is racist and pulling you over cause you're black course. Racist cops exist. And could it be a situation in which somebody is a felon who is, you know, basically going to make the horrible decision to shoot a cop instead of, you know, listening to instructions.

SPEAKER_63: So.

SPEAKER_88: Absolutely. Don't escalate. That is not the place under any circumstances to make a stand on civil liberties or like make a social justice stand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: All right. I have a founder meeting and I would like to back quietly. It's coming from a family of cops.

SPEAKER_363: I can tell you like scariest moment for any cop is a traffic stop.

SPEAKER_40: Yes. Totally. Ten to two. Ten and two everybody. Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. We'll be back again tomorrow. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_340: This is too good to leave. Uh, Eli just tweeted. This is happening right now.

David Friedberg: No, it just, we have to pull up the tweet. Yes. The Saudi Prince who owns whatever tiny percentage of Twitter just said they don't accept Elon's offer. And he said, interesting, just two questions. If I may, how much of Twitter does the kingdom own directly and indirectly? And two, what are the kingdom's views on journalistic freedom of speech?

SPEAKER_368: Hmm. I mean, I don't know. Let's see.

SPEAKER_79: Let's see what happened the last time the leader of Saudi Arabia was moderately criticized. Hmm. Yeah. They shot a guy up.

SPEAKER_03: Now I will say that was a pretty, that was a fairly problematic part of Elon's, uh, the interview on Ted today when he was like, I think Twitter should follow the laws in the country in which it operates. And it was like, oh, you have to is the truth. Well, or you have to, you can not be there, but anyway, it was a sick burn. But as a business, as a business question, I am curious about whether they're gonna like, whether they're serious about making a competing offer.

Jason Calacanis: Cause that was floated on Twitter by this Saudi Prince.

SPEAKER_347: By all means make a competing offer.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's how capitalism works or make your own.

SPEAKER_140: I mean, dude, if he, I'm sorry, but if he gets Twitter accidentally bought by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

SPEAKER_377: Unintended consequences.

SPEAKER_140: Then I am going to be pissed at Elon. Then I will be pissed. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_42: This is like, we live in the future. Saudi Prince buys Twitter. To troll Elon. All journalists are now on moderation mode. Right.

SPEAKER_288: When you're a journalist, if you post, they can, the Saudi kingdom can edit your tweets.

SPEAKER_300: We gotta look for, we gotta, everybody let's identify an alternative to Twitter immediately, because this could be the end.

SPEAKER_246: Hey everyone. Producer Nick here. I want to tell you about the SAS syndicate. If you're a founder of a SAS company with a product and market, our investment team wants to talk to you. Head over to the syndicate.com slash SAS, S A A S to apply to raise from the SAS syndicate. And you can join Jason syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investors at the syndicate.com. Producer Justin here.

SPEAKER_381: Know a cool startup. Check out open scouting.com where anyone can refer a startup to our investment team here at launch. Even if you don't know the founder, if you're the first to flag a company for us and we decide to invest, you'll get 5k in cash or 10% of our carry.

SPEAKER_385: Hey everybody. Producer Rachel here. Are you an early stage startup that has product and market, some traction and are looking to raise at least $500,000? Apply today to remote demo day for your chance to pitch to over 9,000 investors in Jason syndicate. Submit your application at remote demo day.com. Our next event is on April 27th.

SPEAKER_246: And if you want to learn how to invest in startups from the world's greatest angel investor, and no, we're not talking about Chris Saka, then head to angel.university to apply. The four hour workshop costs $300 and all proceeds are donated to charity. To date, we've donated over $175,000 to various charities, and you can see the full list at angel.university slash charity. We'll see you next time.