Jason Calacanis: Startups, Angel Investing, Capitalism, and Friendship
商业与创业技术与编程音乐与艺术政治与社会心理与人性
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🎙️ 完整对话（3455 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Jason Calacanis,
以下是与 Jason Calacanis 的对话，
Lex Fridman (00:03.280)
who's an entrepreneur, investor, author of Angel,
他是一位企业家、投资者、《天使》的作者，
Lex Fridman (00:06.920)
How to Invest in Technology Startups,
如何投资科技初创企业，
Lex Fridman (00:08.920)
and as many people may know, he's a fun, brilliant,
正如很多人可能知道的那样，他是一个有趣、聪明的人
Lex Fridman (00:13.400)
long time podcast host of This Week in Startups,
本周初创公司的长期播客主持人，
Lex Fridman (00:17.520)
and co host of the All In podcast
以及 All In 播客的联合主持人
Lex Fridman (00:20.960)
with Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sachs, and David Friedberg,
与查马斯·帕里哈皮蒂亚 (Chamath Palihapitiya)、大卫·萨克斯 (David Sachs) 和大卫·弗里德伯格 (David Friedberg) 一起，
Jason Calacanis (00:25.640)
who all happen to be poker buddies
谁都是扑克好友
Lex Fridman (00:28.040)
and self proclaimed besties.
并自称是好朋友。
Jason Calacanis (00:30.320)
The result is always a great listen
结果总是很好听
Lex Fridman (00:32.880)
due to both the love and the heated disagreements.
由于爱和激烈的分歧。
Jason Calacanis (00:37.080)
Quick mention of our sponsors,
快速提及我们的赞助商，
Lex Fridman (00:38.840)
Brave Browser, Linode Linux Virtual Machines,
Brave 浏览器、Linode Linux 虚拟机、
Jason Calacanis (00:42.720)
Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee,
四西格玛蘑菇咖啡，
Lex Fridman (00:44.760)
and Rev Speech Detect Service.
和 Rev 语音检测服务。
Jason Calacanis (00:47.480)
Click the sponsor links to get a discount
点击赞助商链接即可获得折扣
Lex Fridman (00:49.760)
and to support this podcast.
并支持这个播客。
Jason Calacanis (00:51.700)
As a side note, let me say that I've been learning a lot
作为旁注，让我说我学到了很多东西
Lex Fridman (00:53.960)
about real world finance in the past few months.
关于过去几个月现实世界的金融。
Jason Calacanis (00:56.560)
To give you a bit of context on the side,
为了给你一些背景信息，
Lex Fridman (00:58.960)
I've studied trading from an algorithmic trading perspective
Jason Calacanis (01:02.360)
as a machine learning and a game theory problem
Lex Fridman (01:04.960)
off and on for a few years in undergrad and grad school.
Jason Calacanis (01:08.320)
I found the distributed complex system aspect of finance
Lex Fridman (01:12.040)
and economics in general fascinating,
Lex Fridman (01:14.480)
but now I find even more fascinating
Lex Fridman (01:17.040)
the human side of the whole thing,
Jason Calacanis (01:19.040)
ideas of greed, power, freedom, and truth.
Lex Fridman (01:23.440)
Wall Street bets, Robin Hood, and the whole beautiful mess
Jason Calacanis (01:26.840)
around this topic allows us to have great conversations
Lex Fridman (01:30.400)
about human nature and the systems that underlie
Jason Calacanis (01:33.800)
the rise and fall of civilizations.
Lex Fridman (01:36.800)
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
Jason Calacanis (01:39.280)
review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
Lex Fridman (01:42.400)
support on Patreon, connect with me on Twitter
Jason Calacanis (01:45.200)
at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (01:46.600)
And now, here's my conversation with Jason Kolokanis.
Jason Calacanis (01:50.700)
I have a million things to talk to you about,
Lex Fridman (01:53.540)
but we do happen to be living through
Lex Fridman (01:57.100)
what I would think of as a historic event
Lex Fridman (02:00.460)
in terms of its impact, in terms of almost philosophically
Jason Calacanis (02:04.540)
thinking about the role of people
Lex Fridman (02:07.220)
and how they can fight power
Jason Calacanis (02:09.540)
with this whole Wall Street bets and GameStop situation.
Lex Fridman (02:13.500)
I was wondering, you've covered in your amazing
Jason Calacanis (02:17.220)
all in podcast, you guys have been having
Lex Fridman (02:19.260)
fascinating battles over this whole situation.
Jason Calacanis (02:22.460)
I was wondering if you could tell maybe
Lex Fridman (02:23.980)
from your perspective, as it's unrolling
Jason Calacanis (02:27.780)
the saga of Wall Street bets and GameStop,
Lex Fridman (02:30.300)
what are some interesting insights
Lex Fridman (02:33.020)
that you have about this whole set of events?
Lex Fridman (02:36.780)
In full disclosure, I was an angel investor
Jason Calacanis (02:38.860)
in Robin Hood before they launched.
Lex Fridman (02:40.980)
And when I met the founder, Vlad, and his partner,
Jason Calacanis (02:44.760)
you know, they pitched me at a bar,
Lex Fridman (02:46.900)
not too far from where we are right now in Palo Alto,
Jason Calacanis (02:48.940)
called Antonio's Nut House.
Lex Fridman (02:51.060)
And my friend Adeo, it's a really good story,
Jason Calacanis (02:54.580)
my friend Adeo had asked me to speak
Lex Fridman (02:56.100)
at his founder's institute, which is kind of like
Jason Calacanis (02:57.620)
an accelerator for people who were thinking
Lex Fridman (02:59.860)
about starting a company.
Lex Fridman (03:01.420)
And so I gave a talk, and then he said,
Lex Fridman (03:02.940)
hey, let's go to Antonio's Nut House
Lex Fridman (03:04.380)
and we'll meet Elon for a drink.
Lex Fridman (03:07.380)
And so Elon met us for a drink there.
Lex Fridman (03:09.620)
And it's the divest of dive bars.
Lex Fridman (03:12.020)
Like you'll take a beer and it will...
Jason Calacanis (03:14.540)
I love the image of all of this.
Lex Fridman (03:15.580)
You hang out with Elon at a crappy bar.
Jason Calacanis (03:18.700)
Yeah, I mean, it is the worst bar in the peninsula.
Lex Fridman (03:23.900)
Like just garbage on the floor, and like cheap beer,
Lex Fridman (03:27.340)
and warm beer, and like you'll pick up your pint glass
Lex Fridman (03:29.780)
and be lipstick on it.
Jason Calacanis (03:30.820)
It's brutal.
Lex Fridman (03:31.820)
Classy.
Jason Calacanis (03:32.660)
Not your lipstick.
Lex Fridman (03:33.540)
You understand, somebody else's lipstick.
Lex Fridman (03:35.740)
And so we're sitting there and Vlad walks up
Lex Fridman (03:39.780)
with his partner and he says, you're Jason Calacanis.
Lex Fridman (03:43.380)
And I said, tell me about your startup.
Lex Fridman (03:44.820)
He said, how do you know I have a startup?
Jason Calacanis (03:46.060)
I said, you recognize me.
Lex Fridman (03:47.360)
And I mean, that's the only way.
Lex Fridman (03:50.720)
And he goes, is that Elon Musk?
Lex Fridman (03:51.800)
And I said, yes, Elon, come say hi.
Lex Fridman (03:53.240)
And he came over and said, hi.
Lex Fridman (03:54.520)
I said, tell me what you do.
Jason Calacanis (03:55.360)
He said, well, I'm a quant.
Lex Fridman (03:57.000)
I said, what's that?
Lex Fridman (03:57.920)
And he said, quantitative analysis.
Lex Fridman (04:00.960)
And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I know about that.
Jason Calacanis (04:02.160)
That's like you guys make algorithms
Lex Fridman (04:04.040)
and then try to beat the market, right?
Jason Calacanis (04:05.200)
He's like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (04:06.040)
I was like, so you're gonna pitch me on a startup
Lex Fridman (04:08.360)
and you're gonna sell your algorithm to other people.
Lex Fridman (04:10.480)
And if it was so good, why wouldn't you just use it yourself
Lex Fridman (04:13.080)
and print money?
Lex Fridman (04:13.920)
He's like, yeah, yeah, no, no, that's not our business.
Jason Calacanis (04:15.460)
Our business is we're gonna create an app
Lex Fridman (04:17.320)
to get millennials to trade stocks.
Lex Fridman (04:19.680)
And he said, hmm, you do realize
Lex Fridman (04:22.200)
there's no retail investors anymore.
Jason Calacanis (04:23.880)
Like the dot com crash plus the 2008 financial crisis
Lex Fridman (04:27.480)
eliminated any individual's belief
Jason Calacanis (04:29.680)
in participating in the stock market.
Lex Fridman (04:31.720)
And he said, that's the opportunity.
Jason Calacanis (04:32.960)
I said, okay, I like it.
Lex Fridman (04:34.040)
Tell me more.
Jason Calacanis (04:35.080)
He said, well, we're gonna get these millennials to trade.
Lex Fridman (04:37.060)
I said, the same ones who live in their mom's basements
Lex Fridman (04:40.660)
and take Uber and Lyft and are on their parents,
Lex Fridman (04:43.380)
have no money, got screwed and went 250K into debt
Jason Calacanis (04:47.400)
for school and now can't get a job.
Lex Fridman (04:49.160)
Those people?
Lex Fridman (04:50.600)
And he's like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (04:51.440)
I'm like, okay, they have no interest in their future,
Lex Fridman (04:54.460)
but they're gonna trade stocks.
Lex Fridman (04:55.800)
He said, yeah, that's the opportunity.
Lex Fridman (04:56.720)
I was like, how are you gonna make money?
Lex Fridman (04:58.880)
And he said, well, that's the best part.
Jason Calacanis (05:00.120)
It's gonna be free.
Lex Fridman (05:02.120)
And I said, so your idea is to get a group of people
Jason Calacanis (05:04.040)
who have no interest in saving for their future
Lex Fridman (05:06.440)
to trade and your business model is free.
Lex Fridman (05:08.120)
And he said, yes.
Lex Fridman (05:08.940)
I said, I'm in.
Jason Calacanis (05:10.360)
Because in almost all cases, the crazy outlandish ideas
Lex Fridman (05:14.440)
that nobody believes in are the ones
Jason Calacanis (05:16.320)
that have the greatest returns.
Lex Fridman (05:17.640)
I mean, Uber, I introduced to about 25 investors
Lex Fridman (05:20.760)
and three of us said yes.
Lex Fridman (05:22.320)
So a full 12% of the community who saw that deal
Jason Calacanis (05:26.580)
decided to do it.
Lex Fridman (05:27.680)
So your sense about this idea being good
Jason Calacanis (05:30.840)
had to do with the fact that this guy was just crazy
Lex Fridman (05:33.920)
and ambitious and bold thinking,
Jason Calacanis (05:35.520)
or was it that there was something here
Lex Fridman (05:37.980)
in allowing a much larger magnitude of people
Lex Fridman (05:41.080)
to be able to be investors?
Lex Fridman (05:42.480)
Yeah, the way to do really well as an angel investor
Jason Calacanis (05:46.600)
or just in technology or in life
Lex Fridman (05:49.320)
is to not say what could go wrong,
Lex Fridman (05:51.100)
but to say what could go right.
Lex Fridman (05:52.480)
And then to just imagine for a moment,
Lex Fridman (05:54.640)
if it does work, what would the world look like?
Lex Fridman (05:58.140)
And so when Elon was investing in Tesla
Lex Fridman (06:00.720)
and some other guys were running it
Lex Fridman (06:02.760)
and he was trying to save the company,
Lex Fridman (06:04.720)
it wasn't, is this gonna work?
Lex Fridman (06:08.160)
It was almost positively not gonna work.
Lex Fridman (06:11.840)
And he knew that, but if it does work,
Lex Fridman (06:14.960)
what does the world look like?
Lex Fridman (06:16.320)
And so that's really what you're looking for
Lex Fridman (06:18.240)
is not the chances of success,
Lex Fridman (06:21.860)
but if it does succeed, what would that look like?
Lex Fridman (06:25.160)
And that's what the world needs more people doing.
Lex Fridman (06:28.840)
And so when you looked at Robinhood, it was like,
Lex Fridman (06:30.360)
well, if he does succeed, what would the world look like?
Lex Fridman (06:32.680)
And now we've seen what it looks like.
Lex Fridman (06:34.520)
You have a generation who are so financially sophisticated
Jason Calacanis (06:39.280)
that they know how to do puts and calls
Lex Fridman (06:41.680)
and shorts and research at a level
Jason Calacanis (06:45.640)
that dominated the hedge fund industry.
Lex Fridman (06:48.560)
So let's pause for a second.
Jason Calacanis (06:50.520)
These traders sitting there on a subreddit
Lex Fridman (06:52.980)
in a discord server are able to do analysis and research
Lex Fridman (06:56.800)
and then act in unison to say,
Lex Fridman (06:58.880)
we're going to beat in the Robinhood sense,
Jason Calacanis (07:03.400)
this group of sophisticated insiders
Lex Fridman (07:05.240)
who have more access and more access to capital,
Lex Fridman (07:08.040)
but we will figure out how to solve this problem.
Lex Fridman (07:11.120)
And most things don't work.
Jason Calacanis (07:14.800)
It's like the Wikipedia.
Lex Fridman (07:16.280)
There's no way the Wikipedia would ever work, except it did.
Lex Fridman (07:21.400)
You're like, how is this ever gonna work?
Lex Fridman (07:23.480)
You're not paying anybody,
Lex Fridman (07:24.960)
but it's both the largest corpus of an encyclopedia ever.
Lex Fridman (07:27.680)
So I think Robinhood actually succeeded.
Lex Fridman (07:29.880)
And then what we saw was this system
Lex Fridman (07:33.160)
and a lot of the systems in our society,
Jason Calacanis (07:35.200)
whether it's the political system,
Lex Fridman (07:37.240)
the constitution of the United States,
Jason Calacanis (07:39.940)
education, higher education, which you're involved in,
Lex Fridman (07:42.960)
and then even the financial system,
Jason Calacanis (07:44.640)
we have not stress tested and stress tested it,
Lex Fridman (07:47.500)
and we don't actually know all the edge cases
Lex Fridman (07:50.360)
and how it works.
Lex Fridman (07:51.260)
So Trump was able to just really put this crazy stress test.
Lex Fridman (07:56.460)
Is the democracy going to hold?
Lex Fridman (07:59.160)
Are we gonna break this two or three,
Lex Fridman (08:01.360)
200 someone year old experiment?
Lex Fridman (08:03.400)
And then we looked at the financial markets
Lex Fridman (08:04.720)
and it turns out there were more people shorting the stock
Lex Fridman (08:07.820)
than stocks and shares were available.
Jason Calacanis (08:10.160)
I don't know how that's possible.
Lex Fridman (08:11.560)
And then I'm trying to uncover,
Lex Fridman (08:13.200)
where can I see a list of people who have shorted the stock?
Lex Fridman (08:15.040)
And it's like, you can't,
Lex Fridman (08:16.640)
but we can tell you sort of how many every two weeks
Lex Fridman (08:19.320)
or maybe twice a week, we can create a report.
Jason Calacanis (08:21.660)
Maybe we know.
Lex Fridman (08:23.080)
I was surprised that nobody knows
Jason Calacanis (08:24.760)
the list of people who were shorted
Lex Fridman (08:26.200)
and you guys are trying to figure that out.
Jason Calacanis (08:27.760)
Yeah, there's no transparency on a lot of these systems.
Lex Fridman (08:30.000)
And if you call to try to short a stock,
Jason Calacanis (08:32.480)
it's almost like they'll tell you on the phone,
Lex Fridman (08:34.040)
let me see, I think I might know a guy
Jason Calacanis (08:35.420)
who has shares to loan out.
Lex Fridman (08:37.040)
So it's like, am I calling to try to find
Lex Fridman (08:39.840)
like a 73 Mustang Grande in gold?
Lex Fridman (08:43.840)
You're gonna call around, it's like,
Jason Calacanis (08:45.160)
shouldn't this be like on a ledger somewhere
Lex Fridman (08:47.680)
and be completely transparent?
Lex Fridman (08:49.180)
So now we're seeing those things.
Lex Fridman (08:50.920)
And I think the investigations will make it super clear.
Lex Fridman (08:52.920)
But of course, in a vacuum without information,
Lex Fridman (08:57.040)
there are so many investors in these startups
Jason Calacanis (08:58.800)
that conflicts can start to appear.
Lex Fridman (09:00.600)
And then you know how it is with people
Lex Fridman (09:01.880)
in conspiracy theories, the mind starts to wander, right?
Lex Fridman (09:05.880)
And so in some cases, there is actually a conspiracy.
Lex Fridman (09:08.660)
And then in other cases, people's mind will fill in like,
Lex Fridman (09:11.840)
oh my God, there's some grand conspiracy here.
Jason Calacanis (09:13.360)
I can tell you Robinhood's only goal
Lex Fridman (09:15.080)
is to get more people to trade stocks
Lex Fridman (09:17.040)
and to democratize it even more.
Lex Fridman (09:18.920)
And they apparently were on the brink of seizing as an entity
Jason Calacanis (09:24.920)
if they didn't get more money to cover all these trades.
Lex Fridman (09:28.080)
I mean, they were on the brink
Lex Fridman (09:30.120)
and they raised $3.5 billion or something like that
Lex Fridman (09:32.200)
in a week.
Jason Calacanis (09:33.040)
Yeah, so in some sense, Robinhood enabled this very,
Lex Fridman (09:37.280)
like the magic of this distributed system
Lex Fridman (09:39.340)
of WallStreetBets, right?
Lex Fridman (09:41.040)
You said Wikipedia, which is another,
Jason Calacanis (09:43.320)
which is probably one of my favorite websites
Lex Fridman (09:45.400)
and one of my favorite examples of like a distributed system
Jason Calacanis (09:48.700)
somehow coming together in a way,
Lex Fridman (09:50.460)
just like you said at that crappy bar,
Jason Calacanis (09:53.400)
I would have guessed it would never work.
Lex Fridman (09:55.440)
But if it does work, it changes everything and it did.
Lex Fridman (09:58.720)
And Robinhood in that same way probably enabled
Lex Fridman (10:02.440)
or was one of the major enablers of WallStreetBets
Jason Calacanis (10:05.240)
of giving power, like empowering young kids to learn
Lex Fridman (10:10.720)
about how this whole messy financial system works
Lex Fridman (10:13.760)
and take on the big elite centralized players.
Lex Fridman (10:17.660)
Yes, and it's very easy.
Jason Calacanis (10:20.000)
When these companies get big,
Lex Fridman (10:21.480)
one thing that's changed is the footprint of these startups
Lex Fridman (10:26.240)
and the velocity at which they grow.
Lex Fridman (10:28.080)
So something like Airbnb is another perfect example
Jason Calacanis (10:30.160)
of something that should really not work in practice,
Lex Fridman (10:33.080)
but it does.
Jason Calacanis (10:33.960)
Like I'm gonna rent my couch or my extra room to somebody
Lex Fridman (10:38.040)
like a serial killer,
Jason Calacanis (10:39.120)
or I'm gonna stay in somebody's house,
Lex Fridman (10:41.200)
like a serial killer's house.
Lex Fridman (10:42.300)
And it's like, it really sounds scary,
Lex Fridman (10:44.720)
but it actually works and it has not destroyed
Jason Calacanis (10:49.200)
the hotel business.
Lex Fridman (10:51.200)
It has added.
Lex Fridman (10:52.680)
So the best startups induce a market to exist.
Lex Fridman (10:55.960)
If you look at Uber or Airbnb, people replace their cars
Lex Fridman (11:01.640)
and Uber was not competing ultimately with taxis.
Lex Fridman (11:05.400)
They were competing with car ownership,
Jason Calacanis (11:07.400)
public transportation, walking, or just not going out.
Lex Fridman (11:11.680)
And then you look at Airbnb,
Jason Calacanis (11:12.680)
a lot of people who stay in an Airbnb
Lex Fridman (11:14.280)
would not be taking a trip to Kyoto,
Jason Calacanis (11:17.440)
if not for the fact that they could get a $75 beautiful room
Lex Fridman (11:20.760)
with great reviews in Kyoto for three weeks.
Jason Calacanis (11:24.600)
It inspires people and it manifests the market
Lex Fridman (11:27.960)
because the product is so transcendent, right?
Lex Fridman (11:30.520)
And I think that's one of the things that Robinhood did.
Lex Fridman (11:33.400)
You can't learn how to do this options trading
Lex Fridman (11:36.040)
and puts and calls and all this sophistication stuff,
Lex Fridman (11:38.680)
unless you actually do it.
Jason Calacanis (11:40.040)
It's just too hard to learn except in practice,
Lex Fridman (11:42.400)
just like poker.
Jason Calacanis (11:43.440)
If you wanna learn how to play poker or guitar
Lex Fridman (11:45.600)
or tennis or skiing, like you can talk about it.
Jason Calacanis (11:47.960)
You can watch YouTube videos,
Lex Fridman (11:49.320)
but at a certain point, you gotta get on the mountain.
Jason Calacanis (11:51.160)
At a certain point, you gotta put some chips in the pot
Lex Fridman (11:54.320)
and it's gonna be painful.
Jason Calacanis (11:55.960)
Like poker is gonna be painful.
Lex Fridman (11:57.120)
You're gonna lose a lot of money
Lex Fridman (11:58.240)
and that's why you should play at the small tables first.
Lex Fridman (11:59.840)
And even in trading, like you look at people
Jason Calacanis (12:02.240)
who are doing this crazy trading and GameStop,
Lex Fridman (12:04.880)
a company that's worth maybe a couple of billion dollars,
Lex Fridman (12:07.840)
but certainly not tens of billions of dollars.
Lex Fridman (12:10.000)
Of course, the people who are throwing their money in last
Jason Calacanis (12:12.080)
are gonna lose it.
Lex Fridman (12:13.240)
I think everybody knew that.
Lex Fridman (12:15.480)
And so it was a momentum play
Lex Fridman (12:16.760)
and they're betting against the hedge funds.
Lex Fridman (12:19.520)
So I think it's good for people to learn
Lex Fridman (12:22.160)
and become financially literate
Lex Fridman (12:23.480)
and just always understand the concept of the risk of ruin.
Lex Fridman (12:27.640)
The good news is for a young person,
Jason Calacanis (12:29.040)
the risk of ruin might be like they lose $5,000 or something
Lex Fridman (12:31.760)
and then they have to build their stack back up.
Lex Fridman (12:33.640)
But that's really the only thing I am concerned about
Lex Fridman (12:36.240)
is there are people who will play poker or blackjack
Jason Calacanis (12:40.320)
or sports betting or whatever it is and lose control.
Lex Fridman (12:43.080)
Just like there might be people who try alcohol
Lex Fridman (12:45.680)
and lose control.
Lex Fridman (12:46.640)
But we can't build a system based upon limiting
Jason Calacanis (12:51.000)
the average person's behavior based upon somebody
Lex Fridman (12:53.200)
who can't control their ability to drink.
Jason Calacanis (12:56.520)
Two glasses of wine instead of 20.
Lex Fridman (12:58.120)
How does this whole thing end?
Jason Calacanis (13:00.240)
Probably in tears.
Lex Fridman (13:01.800)
For who?
Jason Calacanis (13:02.640)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (13:03.480)
Who's crying?
Lex Fridman (13:04.320)
Is everybody crying?
Lex Fridman (13:05.160)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (13:06.000)
Who's crying when?
Lex Fridman (13:06.840)
So I think there were some of the hedge funds
Jason Calacanis (13:08.040)
that were crying initially.
Lex Fridman (13:09.200)
That maybe some of the Wall Street Bets people
Jason Calacanis (13:10.920)
who bought last would be crying.
Lex Fridman (13:13.000)
And then eventually there's probably another set
Jason Calacanis (13:15.840)
of hedge funds or even the Wall Street Bets mob
Lex Fridman (13:19.080)
and that army, some of them might've broke ranks
Lex Fridman (13:22.240)
and then shorted the stock.
Lex Fridman (13:23.720)
So nobody knows.
Lex Fridman (13:24.760)
So everybody has to be aware of what's happening
Lex Fridman (13:26.960)
in the game.
Lex Fridman (13:27.920)
So if Wall Street Bets said, hey, let's squeeze
Lex Fridman (13:29.720)
these hedge funds because they have too much short interest.
Jason Calacanis (13:32.080)
Let's all buy the stock.
Lex Fridman (13:33.800)
Then some of them might've said, okay,
Jason Calacanis (13:35.640)
you know, it's at two or $300.
Lex Fridman (13:37.800)
Maybe I'll join the short movement now that they've covered.
Lex Fridman (13:40.640)
And they could have shorted their been like double agent.
Lex Fridman (13:43.600)
So people have to understand like this stuff is gnarly
Lex Fridman (13:46.920)
and it's a free for all.
Lex Fridman (13:48.360)
I mean, it is a literal free for all.
Jason Calacanis (13:49.800)
There's a kind of morality,
Lex Fridman (13:51.440)
like a big statement that Wall Street Bets made
Jason Calacanis (13:54.320)
in terms of like the elites can't just push us around.
Lex Fridman (13:57.680)
They can't bully around.
Lex Fridman (13:59.520)
But at the same time, you know,
Lex Fridman (14:01.440)
they're also interested in making money, right?
Lex Fridman (14:03.480)
What's your sense?
Lex Fridman (14:05.920)
You said that some of the people in the Wall Street Bets
Jason Calacanis (14:08.040)
might've broken off and shorted the stock.
Lex Fridman (14:10.360)
Are they more interested?
Jason Calacanis (14:11.920)
There was an emergent like morality that emerged
Lex Fridman (14:15.280)
and said like, we're not gonna put up
Jason Calacanis (14:17.960)
with the centralized elites,
Lex Fridman (14:19.440)
but is that going to continue?
Jason Calacanis (14:22.440)
Are they going to fight the power structures
Lex Fridman (14:24.600)
that are bad for society?
Jason Calacanis (14:26.280)
Or are they going to now like,
Lex Fridman (14:28.680)
I mean, are they ultimately going to introduce more chaos
Lex Fridman (14:31.040)
that's going to damage the economy and damage the world?
Lex Fridman (14:33.440)
Or are they going to continue being the good guys
Lex Fridman (14:35.520)
and fighting the evils that manipulate the market?
Lex Fridman (14:40.520)
What's your sense?
Jason Calacanis (14:41.920)
You know, it really feels like the Dark Knight series
Lex Fridman (14:44.640)
of films where like some people
Jason Calacanis (14:46.360)
just want to see the world burn.
Lex Fridman (14:48.000)
I think there is a contingent of people
Jason Calacanis (14:49.760)
who just literally want to see chaos.
Lex Fridman (14:52.200)
Like, you know that contingent on some of these forums
Lex Fridman (14:56.000)
who just want to create chaos, right?
Lex Fridman (14:58.640)
So there's certainly that chaos contingent,
Lex Fridman (15:00.520)
but I think overall what the arc will show
Lex Fridman (15:02.360)
is a group of people getting massively educated.
Jason Calacanis (15:05.200)
You see it in crypto as well.
Lex Fridman (15:06.840)
There was like a three year period
Jason Calacanis (15:08.640)
where all of these failed entrepreneurs who I knew
Lex Fridman (15:13.080)
who couldn't build companies were then coming back to me
Jason Calacanis (15:17.440)
after their companies has failed or after they gave up
Lex Fridman (15:19.760)
or couldn't clear market raising money
Jason Calacanis (15:21.000)
with the venture capital community
Lex Fridman (15:22.800)
and they were doing ICOs.
Lex Fridman (15:24.760)
And I was like, I met you before, right?
Lex Fridman (15:27.560)
And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Calacanis (15:28.400)
No, I'm doing an ICO now.
Lex Fridman (15:29.320)
I'm like, okay, where's your company at?
Lex Fridman (15:32.440)
And they're like, here's a white paper.
Lex Fridman (15:33.680)
And I was like, this white paper with spelling errors in it
Jason Calacanis (15:36.480)
that says you're going to destroy Airbnb
Lex Fridman (15:39.240)
because everybody's apartment
Jason Calacanis (15:40.720)
is gonna be on an immutable ledger.
Lex Fridman (15:42.760)
Like, wouldn't that be better in a regular database
Lex Fridman (15:44.800)
that was private and not public?
Lex Fridman (15:46.640)
Like, why does it need to be on an immutable ledger?
Jason Calacanis (15:48.640)
It can't change.
Lex Fridman (15:49.480)
I'm like, not changing the database is a feature?
Jason Calacanis (15:52.960)
That does not seem like a good feature.
Lex Fridman (15:54.760)
And they couldn't explain it.
Jason Calacanis (15:55.600)
They're like, well, just people are interested in ICOs.
Lex Fridman (15:57.520)
And there was that ICO mania.
Lex Fridman (15:59.240)
And what it showed was there's a global appetite for risk.
Lex Fridman (16:01.840)
People want to try new things.
Jason Calacanis (16:05.040)
This is one of the great things about the human spirit
Lex Fridman (16:07.080)
is one of the great things about capitalism.
Lex Fridman (16:09.200)
And one of the things that concerns me most
Lex Fridman (16:11.400)
about where we're at in society
Jason Calacanis (16:12.480)
is the sort of socialism, communism,
Lex Fridman (16:17.080)
entrepreneurship is bad, technology is bad,
Lex Fridman (16:19.680)
and polarization of wealth,
Lex Fridman (16:21.480)
and people getting rich is a bad thing.
Jason Calacanis (16:23.280)
When I grew up, I'm 50 now,
Lex Fridman (16:24.880)
but when I was a Gen Xer growing up,
Jason Calacanis (16:26.600)
we kind of maybe too much idolized Bill Gates
Lex Fridman (16:29.280)
and people who were doing interesting things in the world.
Lex Fridman (16:31.160)
And we thought capitalism was a force for good.
Lex Fridman (16:32.960)
I still believe capitalism is a force for good
Jason Calacanis (16:35.720)
because when a group of people build a product or service
Lex Fridman (16:39.400)
that changes the world and it gets globally distributed,
Jason Calacanis (16:42.480)
whether it's Tesla or SpaceX or Google or Airbnb
Lex Fridman (16:46.040)
or Uber or Robinhood,
Jason Calacanis (16:48.680)
everybody gets to benefit from that product or service
Lex Fridman (16:51.960)
having to compete.
Lex Fridman (16:52.920)
And if you look at the places where there's no competition
Lex Fridman (16:55.000)
like public education or less established colleges
Lex Fridman (17:00.000)
and something like that,
Lex Fridman (17:00.840)
less competition for accreditation degrees,
Lex Fridman (17:03.360)
like things tend to get a little weird, don't they?
Lex Fridman (17:06.200)
And people tend to be protected and that's not good.
Jason Calacanis (17:09.040)
You need competition.
Lex Fridman (17:11.440)
Doesn't mean that people shouldn't have global healthcare.
Jason Calacanis (17:14.720)
It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a safety net,
Lex Fridman (17:17.000)
but we need to keep capitalism vibrant,
Jason Calacanis (17:18.920)
especially because China has now coopted capitalism
Lex Fridman (17:22.080)
and created their own version of capitalism,
Jason Calacanis (17:24.640)
which is communism with capitalism.
Lex Fridman (17:26.640)
It's like this weird operating system
Jason Calacanis (17:28.040)
like we still want to keep communism
Lex Fridman (17:30.160)
so we can take any of your gains at any time,
Lex Fridman (17:33.240)
but we'd like you to be entrepreneurial.
Lex Fridman (17:35.120)
And then you have somebody like the founder of Alibaba,
Jason Calacanis (17:40.200)
Jack Ma, who disappears for a couple of weeks.
Lex Fridman (17:42.880)
Who's that?
Jason Calacanis (17:43.720)
No, I'm just kidding.
Lex Fridman (17:45.000)
Who's Jack Ma?
Jason Calacanis (17:45.840)
I was like, he kind of disappears for a couple of weeks
Lex Fridman (17:48.280)
and then he comes back and he's really sorry
Jason Calacanis (17:49.960)
about the things he said and then he disappears again.
Lex Fridman (17:52.800)
And like, we have to be very careful.
Jason Calacanis (17:55.400)
You know, we have to be very careful if China wins
Lex Fridman (17:58.800)
capitalism, this is going to be an existential threat
Jason Calacanis (18:03.280)
for humanity.
Lex Fridman (18:05.440)
The Chinese are no joke.
Jason Calacanis (18:07.640)
I mean, they are seriously focused
Lex Fridman (18:09.920)
and they are picking the winners.
Jason Calacanis (18:11.960)
It's a very weird system because it is in fact,
Lex Fridman (18:14.920)
I don't know what you call it.
Jason Calacanis (18:15.960)
Like communism and capitalism is such a overloaded terms,
Lex Fridman (18:19.360)
but they do encourage entrepreneurship,
Lex Fridman (18:22.320)
but they, and they do a good job of it.
Lex Fridman (18:25.000)
Oh, yes.
Lex Fridman (18:25.840)
But then they're like, they're like the surveillance thing
Lex Fridman (18:28.960)
and they're controlling things in a way.
Jason Calacanis (18:31.000)
It's weird because it seems to work really well for them
Lex Fridman (18:35.720)
in the short term.
Jason Calacanis (18:36.640)
Yes, it's definitely got short term benefits.
Lex Fridman (18:38.360)
So the question is like, how that gets distorted
Lex Fridman (18:42.480)
and it becomes worse and worse and worse,
Lex Fridman (18:44.360)
which it potentially might be.
Lex Fridman (18:45.800)
And I think on, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit,
Lex Fridman (18:51.680)
which you have a podcast all centered
Jason Calacanis (18:53.840)
around the entrepreneurial spirit,
Lex Fridman (18:56.240)
is one of the magical things that makes this country great.
Jason Calacanis (18:59.200)
I don't know if money is deeply tied into that.
Lex Fridman (19:02.200)
I do get bothered by people, you know,
Jason Calacanis (19:05.320)
treating the word billionaires if it's a bad word.
Lex Fridman (19:08.440)
But in general, like all the hard things,
Jason Calacanis (19:12.120)
all the difficult things we're going through in this country,
Lex Fridman (19:14.200)
it seems like the way out is going to be
Jason Calacanis (19:19.440)
making the entrepreneur the hero of society
Lex Fridman (19:22.920)
of like letting that young kid with a big dream
Lex Fridman (19:26.400)
and the guts to take the big risks
Lex Fridman (19:28.200)
and build something totally new,
Jason Calacanis (19:31.000)
giving them a chance and whatever that involves.
Lex Fridman (19:34.000)
I don't think it's about taxes.
Jason Calacanis (19:35.520)
I don't think it's about like regulation, all that stuff.
Lex Fridman (19:38.720)
It's about us and just public discourse saying
Jason Calacanis (19:42.120)
that kid, that guy, that girl, they're bad asses.
Lex Fridman (19:45.680)
Like encourage them to do it.
Jason Calacanis (19:47.440)
We have to have people buy in
Lex Fridman (19:49.800)
to the fact that they have that opportunity.
Lex Fridman (19:52.640)
And I think one of the problems in society is
Lex Fridman (19:55.360)
there's a group of people who actually don't believe
Jason Calacanis (19:57.840)
that they can succeed or they don't believe
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.440)
that's once healthy, but also unhealthy
Jason Calacanis (1:00:06.840)
in the way that an Olympic pursuit is.
Lex Fridman (1:00:09.040)
It's all top down.
Jason Calacanis (1:00:10.480)
Everybody just, you asked earlier what leadership was
Lex Fridman (1:00:12.840)
and I never answered the question.
Jason Calacanis (1:00:13.800)
I think what leaders do is they set the example,
Lex Fridman (1:00:16.400)
they set the bar.
Lex Fridman (1:00:17.680)
And if you look at someone like Elon,
Lex Fridman (1:00:19.920)
we're personal friends for 20 years
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.400)
and he is indefatigable.
Lex Fridman (1:00:24.680)
Like, I mean, the guy has a stamina that is just phenomenal.
Jason Calacanis (1:00:29.000)
Like he does not get tired.
Lex Fridman (1:00:30.400)
He works relentlessly
Lex Fridman (1:00:32.200)
and he sets that standard for the rest of the team.
Lex Fridman (1:00:36.000)
And I think Bezos is very sharp
Lex Fridman (1:00:38.800)
and likes to debate stuff and is very,
Lex Fridman (1:00:41.520)
and Jobs was just incredible at design
Lex Fridman (1:00:44.400)
and figuring out how to bridge that gap.
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.080)
So they just, leaders set the standard.
Jason Calacanis (1:00:48.880)
They set the standard.
Lex Fridman (1:00:50.200)
And you know that your time is over as a leader
Jason Calacanis (1:00:52.360)
when you can't set the standard.
Lex Fridman (1:00:53.800)
And that's when you have to pass the baton, right?
Lex Fridman (1:00:55.720)
And Bezos did that.
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.160)
And Bezos now is saying, you know what?
Jason Calacanis (1:00:58.880)
I'm 57, I'm the richest guy on the planet,
Lex Fridman (1:01:02.680)
depending on the week.
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.920)
And I would like to do some other challenges,
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.560)
but I don't wanna grind it out at Amazon
Jason Calacanis (1:01:08.840)
for another 25 years.
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.280)
I wanna do other things.
Lex Fridman (1:01:11.360)
And so he passed the baton.
Lex Fridman (1:01:13.040)
And that's the healthy thing to do in that regard.
Jason Calacanis (1:01:15.320)
I do think there is a time period
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.160)
in which you can run that hot.
Lex Fridman (1:01:18.840)
And then at a certain point you have to then change.
Lex Fridman (1:01:20.600)
Just like an athlete might go to be a coach, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:01:24.360)
Or a commentator.
Lex Fridman (1:01:25.600)
And so being an entrepreneur is brutal.
Jason Calacanis (1:01:29.440)
It's seven days a week, 12 hours a day.
Lex Fridman (1:01:31.920)
Anybody who says anything differently
Jason Calacanis (1:01:33.320)
is kidding themselves.
Lex Fridman (1:01:34.640)
You're gonna have to sacrifice.
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.560)
And this competition, and America has to fight.
Lex Fridman (1:01:39.960)
If America does not win capitalism, and China does,
Jason Calacanis (1:01:43.840)
it is literally the end of the human species.
Lex Fridman (1:01:47.880)
It's over for humanity.
Jason Calacanis (1:01:49.680)
Right now, everything has been going really well
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.640)
in terms of the number of people living in poverty
Jason Calacanis (1:01:54.680)
is plummeting.
Lex Fridman (1:01:57.800)
Lifespans have been rising.
Jason Calacanis (1:01:59.160)
Science is booming.
Lex Fridman (1:02:01.120)
The economy is booming.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:02.080)
All these things are incredible.
Lex Fridman (1:02:02.920)
The one thing that's kind of stagnant right now
Jason Calacanis (1:02:05.080)
is the number of people living in democracy
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.080)
versus under authoritarian rule.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:09.480)
It's flat.
Lex Fridman (1:02:10.320)
So when you look at all Steve Pinker's charts,
Lex Fridman (1:02:11.920)
and he's really excited,
Lex Fridman (1:02:13.400)
there's one you're gonna see that's flat.
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.040)
And I think we peaked with 53 or 54% of people
Lex Fridman (1:02:18.480)
on the planet Earth being in a democracy,
Lex Fridman (1:02:20.320)
and now it's going below 50.
Lex Fridman (1:02:22.480)
And it's because some of the democratic Western countries
Jason Calacanis (1:02:26.120)
don't have the population growth
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.400)
of some of the communist and socialist countries
Lex Fridman (1:02:30.280)
and authoritarian countries.
Lex Fridman (1:02:31.600)
And we have to make sure that we win capitalism.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:35.960)
We must win economically.
Lex Fridman (1:02:38.160)
That is the battlefield.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:39.520)
The battlefield is science, technology, and money,
Lex Fridman (1:02:41.920)
and economy, finance.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:43.320)
That's the battlefield.
Lex Fridman (1:02:44.600)
China wins, authoritarians win.
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.440)
And at any time, Xi Jinping can pull Jack Ma into a room
Lex Fridman (1:02:51.320)
and say, it's time for you to be reeducated.
Jason Calacanis (1:02:54.280)
Or they can put three or four million people,
Lex Fridman (1:02:56.320)
Uighurs, into prison camps and say, you know what?
Jason Calacanis (1:02:59.160)
This religious thing,
Lex Fridman (1:03:00.720)
that's counter to what is productive for us.
Jason Calacanis (1:03:03.600)
Therefore, we're gonna shave your heads
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.480)
and we're going to have you
Jason Calacanis (1:03:06.480)
literally pick cotton in the fields.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.200)
They have Uighurs with no sense of any kind of
Jason Calacanis (1:03:12.880)
arc of history in the fields picking cottons
Lex Fridman (1:03:15.720)
as slaves in what can only be described
Jason Calacanis (1:03:19.160)
by every humanitarian organization as a concentration camp.
Lex Fridman (1:03:22.280)
And every Jewish person I know takes great offense
Jason Calacanis (1:03:24.680)
when somebody uses the Holocaust as a metaphor,
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.240)
except in the case of the Uighurs right now.
Lex Fridman (1:03:29.480)
And every Jewish person I've talked to has said to me,
Lex Fridman (1:03:32.320)
that is a Holocaust.
Jason Calacanis (1:03:33.480)
That is millions of people going to genocide
Lex Fridman (1:03:37.080)
because of their religious beliefs.
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.640)
And I'm an atheist,
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.120)
but if people wanna believe a certain religion, fine.
Lex Fridman (1:03:43.120)
But China's approach is we need to win capitalism so bad,
Lex Fridman (1:03:47.160)
we need to win on the global stage so bad,
Jason Calacanis (1:03:49.520)
we can't have any of this religious stuff going on here.
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.520)
That is a distraction from winning and beating America.
Lex Fridman (1:03:55.400)
And then in America,
Lex Fridman (1:03:56.640)
the people who are gonna make us win are the entrepreneurs
Lex Fridman (1:03:59.040)
and the scientists and the technology
Lex Fridman (1:04:00.520)
and our education system and finance.
Lex Fridman (1:04:02.320)
And we're vilifying those things.
Lex Fridman (1:04:04.120)
It's pretty dark.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:05.440)
It's dark, but I still believe that the vilification
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.120)
is just in the space of Twitter and the space of ideas.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:11.440)
I think that's probably a good.
Lex Fridman (1:04:12.280)
And entrepreneurs win out in the end.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:14.520)
They don't listen to that.
Lex Fridman (1:04:15.360)
I believe we'll win.
Lex Fridman (1:04:16.200)
And they'll build, we'll get the rocks up.
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.720)
Some of them do actually in their darkest moments,
Jason Calacanis (1:04:19.640)
I can tell you that they turn off their Twitter accounts
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.600)
and they, I've had to sit down
Jason Calacanis (1:04:23.240)
with a number of entrepreneurs and say, turn off Twitter.
Lex Fridman (1:04:26.560)
This is not healthy for you.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:28.360)
This is not a healthy pursuit because,
Lex Fridman (1:04:30.320)
don't read the comments.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:31.280)
If you do, it's like a full contact sport.
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.080)
You should just take it as like professional wrestling
Jason Calacanis (1:04:35.640)
or something, but stay focused on building companies
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.840)
and advancing the human species
Jason Calacanis (1:04:41.800)
through science and technology.
Lex Fridman (1:04:43.120)
I mean.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:43.960)
As you're describing, you've hosted this week in startups
Lex Fridman (1:04:47.040)
for how many episodes?
Jason Calacanis (1:04:49.360)
11 years, almost 1200 now.
Lex Fridman (1:04:51.160)
1200.
Jason Calacanis (1:04:52.120)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.960)
So you've talked to some of the great leaders
Jason Calacanis (1:04:54.480)
in business in general.
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.240)
Is there a common thing that you see or?
Jason Calacanis (1:05:01.400)
Really, I'm in a relationship with their parents.
Lex Fridman (1:05:03.920)
Like just find me a great entrepreneur.
Jason Calacanis (1:05:06.440)
I will, show me the trauma.
Lex Fridman (1:05:08.480)
Their dad was like, you're not good enough.
Lex Fridman (1:05:10.760)
In the teenage years, is that truly, is there something?
Lex Fridman (1:05:14.280)
There is definitely something.
Lex Fridman (1:05:15.640)
Hardship at some point in their life kind of thing?
Lex Fridman (1:05:18.080)
Yeah, I think so.
Jason Calacanis (1:05:18.920)
I mean, and there's definitely something
Lex Fridman (1:05:20.960)
with immigrant parents that is a bit of a stereotype
Jason Calacanis (1:05:24.440)
out here, but I've heard from many investors,
Lex Fridman (1:05:26.280)
like that's like their, oh, were your parents immigrants?
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.520)
And did they beat into you that you have to succeed
Lex Fridman (1:05:32.480)
and you feel the need to succeed
Lex Fridman (1:05:34.240)
because they suffered to get you to this country?
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.960)
Like there is an archetype there that I hear.
Jason Calacanis (1:05:38.840)
When I started investing, I heard from a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.840)
It's like, yeah, you wanna find those immigrant founders
Jason Calacanis (1:05:43.080)
who are coming out of Stanford
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.120)
because they had to fight to get there
Lex Fridman (1:05:45.840)
and their parents had to fight, right?
Lex Fridman (1:05:47.960)
So it was like two huge fights and there's so much at stake
Jason Calacanis (1:05:50.520)
as opposed to somebody who's fifth generation
Lex Fridman (1:05:52.400)
and like had everything handed to them
Lex Fridman (1:05:54.080)
and they were legacy and got into schools for free.
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.960)
But I think in general, the ability to get people
Jason Calacanis (1:05:59.960)
to join you on that journey is so critical.
Lex Fridman (1:06:03.080)
So you have to be charismatic
Lex Fridman (1:06:05.280)
and it doesn't mean like you're an extrovert.
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.320)
There are introverts who are super charismatic
Lex Fridman (1:06:10.640)
and there are soft spoken people.
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.600)
They don't have to be like super vivacious
Jason Calacanis (1:06:14.120)
or rambunctious people.
Lex Fridman (1:06:16.600)
They could be just quiet assassins,
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.080)
but you need to be able to get people
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.880)
to come on the journey with you.
Jason Calacanis (1:06:21.000)
You have to be that storyteller
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.720)
and you have to have that passion
Lex Fridman (1:06:23.840)
and then you have to transfer that enthusiasm to investors,
Lex Fridman (1:06:26.760)
the press, to customers, to all the stakeholders.
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.960)
And if you're enthusiastic about it and you're engaged,
Lex Fridman (1:06:33.240)
then it's easier for people to come on that journey.
Lex Fridman (1:06:35.200)
And that's why people really start to think about,
Lex Fridman (1:06:37.680)
well, what is the purpose of what I'm doing?
Lex Fridman (1:06:39.840)
And it sounds corny and when I first heard that,
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.200)
I was like, it's kind of corny.
Lex Fridman (1:06:43.120)
But then I read this book by,
Lex Fridman (1:06:44.920)
I've got his name, Rick something.
Jason Calacanis (1:06:47.320)
He wrote the purpose driven church
Lex Fridman (1:06:49.960)
and he had spoken at a TED or something
Lex Fridman (1:06:51.600)
and everybody went crazy about it.
Lex Fridman (1:06:53.880)
And he's like, a church should have one purpose,
Jason Calacanis (1:06:56.600)
one single thing they do.
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.440)
And like his church,
Jason Calacanis (1:06:58.960)
which was like one of these mega churches in San Diego,
Lex Fridman (1:07:01.360)
just wanted to do education for this specific country.
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.720)
And that's all they did.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.760)
And they just, they benchmarked.
Jason Calacanis (1:07:08.360)
I think it's very important to have a purpose and a mission,
Lex Fridman (1:07:10.600)
not everything, but a specific purpose of some kind of joy
Jason Calacanis (1:07:16.280)
that you wanna put into the world.
Lex Fridman (1:07:17.560)
You wanna solve some kind of big, hard problem.
Lex Fridman (1:07:20.320)
And then everybody knows
Lex Fridman (1:07:22.000)
why you're coming to work every day.
Lex Fridman (1:07:23.840)
And then for the founder,
Lex Fridman (1:07:24.880)
when you dread going to work that day
Lex Fridman (1:07:27.560)
and you don't feel like solving that problem anymore,
Lex Fridman (1:07:29.720)
that's the tell.
Lex Fridman (1:07:31.120)
And a lot of times I meet young founders,
Lex Fridman (1:07:32.440)
I'm like, why are you doing this?
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.280)
And they're like, well, I was looking for an idea
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.200)
and this is the one I came up with
Jason Calacanis (1:07:37.320)
because I think I'll make a lot of money.
Lex Fridman (1:07:38.520)
And it's like, you're gonna quit.
Jason Calacanis (1:07:41.040)
You're gonna get to month nine or 10 of this
Lex Fridman (1:07:42.880)
and you're gonna run out of money
Jason Calacanis (1:07:44.360)
or like your CTO is gonna quit,
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.400)
then your CFO is gonna quit
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.720)
and you're gonna lose your biggest customer
Lex Fridman (1:07:49.080)
and you're just gonna say, this is not worth it.
Lex Fridman (1:07:52.560)
And if using Bezos or Elon as examples,
Lex Fridman (1:07:57.560)
they just needed to see the world change
Jason Calacanis (1:08:00.560)
in very specific ways.
Lex Fridman (1:08:02.400)
And Steve Jobs, they needed to see a change
Lex Fridman (1:08:04.440)
and it doesn't matter if they made money
Lex Fridman (1:08:06.480)
or they were losing or winning,
Jason Calacanis (1:08:07.840)
they just went to work every day and they had to change it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:10.520)
It's almost like they didn't have a choice.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:12.240)
No choice.
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.080)
Elon makes it sound like his torture, his whole journey,
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.360)
but he can't help it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:16.800)
Having been a witness to it, just as friends for that long,
Jason Calacanis (1:08:22.280)
I have never seen an entrepreneur suffer more than him.
Lex Fridman (1:08:25.240)
And he's been public about that, like you do not wanna be me.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:28.400)
He has suffered for those companies.
Lex Fridman (1:08:31.200)
He has suffered to get them where they are.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:32.760)
It has not been easy.
Lex Fridman (1:08:34.080)
Can you second analyze Elon in that aspect?
Lex Fridman (1:08:36.920)
Like, is it just he can't help it?
Lex Fridman (1:08:39.600)
He must see the change that he hopes for in the world.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:44.000)
He's just incredibly hardworking
Lex Fridman (1:08:46.320)
and he's very talented as well.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:49.320)
I don't think people understand that.
Lex Fridman (1:08:51.360)
He actually is a really brilliant man.
Jason Calacanis (1:08:53.800)
He actually is a really brilliant engineer.
Lex Fridman (1:08:56.080)
At the end of the day, he actually knows what he's doing
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.960)
and he asked the right questions.
Lex Fridman (1:09:00.360)
I mean, people were kind of aghast
Jason Calacanis (1:09:02.840)
that he was asking Vlad such good questions.
Lex Fridman (1:09:05.120)
And they're like, oh my God,
Jason Calacanis (1:09:06.400)
Elon's the best journalist on the planet.
Lex Fridman (1:09:08.080)
And it was like, anybody who knows Elon knows
Jason Calacanis (1:09:11.240)
he has great questions.
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.080)
I mean, I used to have dinner in LA
Lex Fridman (1:09:15.240)
and my book agent also was Sam Harris's agent.
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.480)
And Sam and I met through John Brockman
Lex Fridman (1:09:22.080)
and we became friends because we lived near each other
Lex Fridman (1:09:24.080)
and I was friends with Elon.
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.640)
And then I used to invite them to both dinner in Brentwood
Lex Fridman (1:09:27.840)
because one lived in Bel Air,
Jason Calacanis (1:09:29.160)
one lived in Santa Monica and I lived in Brentwood.
Lex Fridman (1:09:30.960)
And we would go to this place,
Jason Calacanis (1:09:31.880)
Popone, this Italian restaurant.
Lex Fridman (1:09:33.640)
And every Tuesday for years, we would just,
Jason Calacanis (1:09:36.400)
the three of us, every other Tuesday or so,
Lex Fridman (1:09:38.000)
we'd have dinner and I'd sit there
Lex Fridman (1:09:40.480)
and Sam wanted to know about AI
Lex Fridman (1:09:42.080)
and Elon's talking about artificial intelligence
Jason Calacanis (1:09:43.960)
because he's on the board of DeepMind.
Lex Fridman (1:09:46.520)
Elon wanted to know about atheism and meditation
Lex Fridman (1:09:49.320)
and all this other stuff that Sam was an expert on.
Lex Fridman (1:09:52.680)
I got to sit there and just listen to these two guys talk.
Lex Fridman (1:09:56.360)
And they have both piercing intelligences,
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.720)
but Elon, he goes straight to the gut,
Jason Calacanis (1:10:02.560)
like the questions that no engineer wants to hear
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.240)
is just the basic stuff that,
Jason Calacanis (1:10:08.920)
it's like, why the hell are you doing it this way
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.680)
when the obvious solution is much easier or this or that?
Lex Fridman (1:10:15.960)
Why haven't you tried this?
Lex Fridman (1:10:17.160)
He can figure things out.
Jason Calacanis (1:10:18.000)
I mean, he's a problem solver.
Lex Fridman (1:10:19.400)
I mean, and that's another thing,
Jason Calacanis (1:10:20.800)
like I think the great entrepreneurs
Lex Fridman (1:10:22.200)
can look at a problem with very fresh eyes,
Jason Calacanis (1:10:24.720)
like almost consistently.
Lex Fridman (1:10:25.760)
And Bezos described that as day one thinking, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:10:30.120)
Like just pretend this is day one every day.
Lex Fridman (1:10:32.400)
And then other people use the term first principles,
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.680)
but it basically means like when you see a problem,
Lex Fridman (1:10:38.400)
pause for a second and really think through
Lex Fridman (1:10:41.640)
what is the best possible solution here?
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.400)
What are some alternative solutions and get from everybody,
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.760)
like how do we solve this problem?
Lex Fridman (1:10:47.000)
What people do sometimes they get in a rut.
Jason Calacanis (1:10:49.000)
They just come to work and they just go through their email.
Lex Fridman (1:10:51.920)
They do whatever they did the day before.
Lex Fridman (1:10:53.680)
They don't think, why are we doing this?
Lex Fridman (1:10:55.440)
And is there a better way to do it?
Jason Calacanis (1:10:56.900)
Now you can get so obsessive about that
Lex Fridman (1:10:58.880)
that you can over engineer stuff
Lex Fridman (1:11:01.060)
and you can never actually ship a product.
Lex Fridman (1:11:03.400)
So there have to be some pragmatism and some goals
Lex Fridman (1:11:06.600)
and some dates associated with that.
Lex Fridman (1:11:08.320)
But it is a very cool thing to really think like,
Jason Calacanis (1:11:12.280)
I wonder if we actually made the batteries ourselves,
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.640)
what that would look like.
Jason Calacanis (1:11:15.480)
Or I wonder if we could get to two day shipping,
Lex Fridman (1:11:18.880)
or what if we do same day shipping?
Jason Calacanis (1:11:20.920)
Like you need to have somebody who's willing to say,
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.100)
you know what, fuck it.
Jason Calacanis (1:11:24.280)
Let's set a crazy audacious goal.
Lex Fridman (1:11:26.520)
Two day shipping of any product
Jason Calacanis (1:11:28.300)
anywhere in the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:11:29.680)
And once you throw the gauntlet down like that,
Jason Calacanis (1:11:31.200)
now everybody knows they're rolling in the right direction.
Lex Fridman (1:11:34.040)
Two day shipping, Amazon Prime.
Lex Fridman (1:11:36.040)
And that's what people didn't realize about Amazon.
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.800)
The business wasn't shipping all those products.
Jason Calacanis (1:11:40.080)
It was getting you to sign up for Amazon Prime.
Lex Fridman (1:11:43.000)
They have hundreds of millions of people doing Amazon Prime
Jason Calacanis (1:11:46.240)
for 10 bucks a month.
Lex Fridman (1:11:47.400)
I think globally it's probably cheaper.
Lex Fridman (1:11:48.940)
But that was the driver of that business
Lex Fridman (1:11:51.840)
was all of those people.
Lex Fridman (1:11:53.080)
Cause they would, you're an Amazon Prime subscriber?
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.960)
Do you know how much you pay?
Jason Calacanis (1:11:57.280)
No.
Lex Fridman (1:11:58.120)
Exactly.
Jason Calacanis (1:11:58.960)
It started at $50.
Lex Fridman (1:12:00.280)
And I think they even had like 40, 50, $60
Jason Calacanis (1:12:02.520)
was like the testing in the early days.
Lex Fridman (1:12:03.920)
And now it's, I think $149, 12, $13 a month.
Jason Calacanis (1:12:08.480)
If you pay for the year,
Lex Fridman (1:12:09.300)
I think it goes down to 10 bucks a month, 120.
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.840)
And you're like, wow.
Lex Fridman (1:12:12.680)
And it's like, yeah, you're paying $13 a month
Jason Calacanis (1:12:14.960)
for the privilege of shopping at Amazon.
Lex Fridman (1:12:19.220)
But you say it's the greatest thing in the world
Jason Calacanis (1:12:21.680)
because anything I need,
Lex Fridman (1:12:23.280)
if you forgot a microphone or a cable goes bad
Jason Calacanis (1:12:25.080)
or a camera goes bad, you get it here within a day or less.
Lex Fridman (1:12:28.360)
It's pretty amazing.
Jason Calacanis (1:12:29.560)
You've already been dropping bombs,
Lex Fridman (1:12:31.000)
incredible advice on startups in general.
Lex Fridman (1:12:33.440)
But let me maybe go straight in and ask,
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.760)
is there advice for somebody that wants to go big
Lex Fridman (1:12:41.880)
to build the big startup to help them succeed?
Lex Fridman (1:12:44.680)
Yeah, it's very similar to the advice I give to investors
Jason Calacanis (1:12:47.560)
because now I teach angel investing
Lex Fridman (1:12:49.800)
because there's so many people who want to invest.
Lex Fridman (1:12:51.640)
And so I wrote a book on that angel
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.920)
and then I do a course called Angel University
Jason Calacanis (1:12:55.880)
that I teach six times a year.
Lex Fridman (1:12:57.400)
And then I have a syndicate called thesyndicate.com
Jason Calacanis (1:12:59.320)
where I invest in companies.
Lex Fridman (1:13:00.240)
There's 6,500 people who are members of that.
Jason Calacanis (1:13:02.400)
It's the largest syndicate in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.080)
In fact, the first deal we ever did was calm.com,
Jason Calacanis (1:13:06.760)
the meditation app.
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.580)
We put $378,000 into it
Jason Calacanis (1:13:09.360)
when it was a $5 million product.
Lex Fridman (1:13:11.260)
A $5 million company.
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.100)
So we bought six or 7% of the company.
Lex Fridman (1:13:13.840)
It's now worth 2 billion.
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.060)
So you can do the math on that.
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.940)
We still own 5%.
Lex Fridman (1:13:16.780)
What year was that?
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.040)
Six years ago.
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.880)
So probably seven, yeah, maybe 2015, 2014.
Lex Fridman (1:13:23.300)
And nobody else would invest in calm.
Lex Fridman (1:13:25.600)
But Sam Harris was the reason I did because I asked Sam,
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.560)
tell me about meditation.
Lex Fridman (1:13:30.600)
And he's explaining it to me.
Lex Fridman (1:13:31.700)
And I said, what about this?
Jason Calacanis (1:13:32.600)
You have to have like a mantra.
Lex Fridman (1:13:33.760)
How does it work exactly?
Jason Calacanis (1:13:34.720)
I know positive.
Lex Fridman (1:13:35.560)
He was like, well, you know, you should just go to UCLA
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.040)
and talk to Diana Winston.
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.960)
And like, there's this whole project there.
Lex Fridman (1:13:39.780)
And I'm like, UCLA does meditation?
Lex Fridman (1:13:42.280)
He's like, yeah, there's a mindful institute.
Jason Calacanis (1:13:43.760)
They're like teaching people to be Tahitian meditation.
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.880)
And they're doing PTSD and I'm doing brain scans.
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.360)
And I was like, oh.
Lex Fridman (1:13:50.920)
And then I talked to the UCLA people and they're like,
Jason Calacanis (1:13:53.200)
it's real, yeah, like we taught Phil Jackson
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.720)
and Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O Neal did,
Jason Calacanis (1:13:59.440)
you know, that's how they won their championships.
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.100)
They meditated.
Lex Fridman (1:14:02.200)
And I was like, hmm, if UCLA is doing it,
Lex Fridman (1:14:05.720)
Sam says it's cool.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:06.920)
Well, fuck it, I'll put money into that.
Lex Fridman (1:14:08.960)
And that's the second biggest investment
Jason Calacanis (1:14:10.360)
in my career after Uber.
Lex Fridman (1:14:11.680)
And it will in all likelihood become the biggest.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:13.840)
I mean, it's between Uber, Robinhood and Calm.
Lex Fridman (1:14:18.060)
And long story short,
Jason Calacanis (1:14:19.020)
when I'm teaching people to angel invest,
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.480)
there's really two things that you cannot fake.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:23.920)
One is a product that is built really well.
Lex Fridman (1:14:26.920)
So if you look at Calm, Robinhood, Uber, Tesla, Amazon,
Jason Calacanis (1:14:30.140)
these products are transcendent.
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.180)
They're well constructed.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:34.200)
There's craftsmanship to them.
Lex Fridman (1:14:35.840)
They're great products.
Lex Fridman (1:14:37.040)
So you're saying not fundamentally like the idea,
Lex Fridman (1:14:39.440)
but the execution of the actual craftsmanship
Jason Calacanis (1:14:41.640)
of the construction.
Lex Fridman (1:14:42.480)
The actual product is amazing.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:45.200)
Then there's customers.
Lex Fridman (1:14:48.840)
And that every business has ultimately a customer.
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.800)
And that customer, if they are in fact delighted
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.660)
by that product, that's the magic.
Jason Calacanis (1:14:57.760)
Because you need a team to build the product.
Lex Fridman (1:15:02.640)
And then you need customers to use the product.
Lex Fridman (1:15:05.400)
And really those three vectors are undeniable.
Lex Fridman (1:15:08.240)
Now, you can have great teams that build a bad product,
Jason Calacanis (1:15:12.340)
doesn't happen too often.
Lex Fridman (1:15:14.240)
Or you can have customers who don't like the product,
Lex Fridman (1:15:16.000)
but generally speaking,
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.160)
a great team will build a great product
Jason Calacanis (1:15:20.920)
or a good product that iterate,
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.960)
and then eventually delight customers.
Lex Fridman (1:15:25.160)
And so most people say the team is the most important,
Lex Fridman (1:15:28.760)
but there's a lot of smart people out there.
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.040)
And let's assume that you can raise money for your idea,
Lex Fridman (1:15:36.640)
or you have money,
Jason Calacanis (1:15:37.480)
or you can just convince people to do it for free.
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.560)
If you make a great product and it connects with users,
Jason Calacanis (1:15:41.500)
that's the magic.
Lex Fridman (1:15:42.340)
You look at Clubhouse,
Jason Calacanis (1:15:43.160)
it's actually a really well designed product.
Lex Fridman (1:15:45.660)
And that product is connecting with customers.
Lex Fridman (1:15:47.680)
And if you were to talk to the customers
Lex Fridman (1:15:49.000)
or look at the product,
Jason Calacanis (1:15:50.280)
you would see a well constructed product
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.920)
and a delighted customer.
Lex Fridman (1:15:53.520)
And you can tell the delighted customer
Lex Fridman (1:15:54.920)
by just the amount of time they use it.
Jason Calacanis (1:15:56.640)
That's called engagement.
Lex Fridman (1:15:58.160)
It's the fancy word for how much they use it.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.200)
And Snapchat, when that was going around
Lex Fridman (1:16:02.880)
and they were trying to raise money,
Jason Calacanis (1:16:04.540)
they had a fraction of the number of users,
Lex Fridman (1:16:07.240)
but the top maybe third were opening the app every hour.
Lex Fridman (1:16:12.920)
And nobody had ever seen that before.
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.960)
People were using Facebook a couple of times a day,
Jason Calacanis (1:16:17.140)
the top users,
Lex Fridman (1:16:18.100)
but nobody had ever seen people using it every day
Jason Calacanis (1:16:22.480)
for a hundred days in a row, every hour.
Lex Fridman (1:16:25.400)
And I was like, what's going on here?
Jason Calacanis (1:16:26.360)
It's like, oh, the ephemeral messaging,
Lex Fridman (1:16:28.780)
and then the streaks.
Jason Calacanis (1:16:30.060)
They had created these streaks between people
Lex Fridman (1:16:31.720)
where every day and then people would be like on vacation,
Jason Calacanis (1:16:34.440)
like, I just have to open my streak
Lex Fridman (1:16:35.720)
and keep my streak with Lex
Jason Calacanis (1:16:36.800)
that we chatted every day going.
Lex Fridman (1:16:38.620)
And so they had this like addictive nature to it.
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.320)
And that's why Clubhouse was able
Lex Fridman (1:16:41.440)
to garner so much investment
Jason Calacanis (1:16:43.240)
is the number of hours people were using it every month
Lex Fridman (1:16:46.800)
was just unbelievably off the charts.
Jason Calacanis (1:16:49.500)
Some of that is execution,
Lex Fridman (1:16:50.700)
but some of it is the weird magic of the...
Jason Calacanis (1:16:53.560)
Product market fit.
Lex Fridman (1:16:54.600)
Yeah, so there's something, I mean, Clubhouse,
Jason Calacanis (1:16:57.160)
there's a, it's still a mystery to me
Lex Fridman (1:16:59.560)
because I also use Discord voice.
Jason Calacanis (1:17:01.680)
There's an intimacy to voice.
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.720)
Oh, for sure.
Jason Calacanis (1:17:04.560)
Well, you have people's, yeah, tent.
Lex Fridman (1:17:06.560)
It's, well, but like the video gets in the way actually,
Jason Calacanis (1:17:10.240)
in a weird way.
Lex Fridman (1:17:11.120)
There's a privacy when you just use voice.
Jason Calacanis (1:17:14.320)
People are not taking showers now, Lex.
Lex Fridman (1:17:15.840)
I mean, we're in a pandemic and people just roll out of bed.
Lex Fridman (1:17:18.720)
And the hair thing, nobody's getting haircuts.
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.560)
Nobody's hair is good, nobody's getting haircuts.
Jason Calacanis (1:17:22.480)
People are wearing gym clothes.
Lex Fridman (1:17:24.140)
I mean, Zoom is just horrific to be on Zoom
Jason Calacanis (1:17:27.120)
for five hours a day.
Lex Fridman (1:17:28.080)
It is exhausting.
Jason Calacanis (1:17:29.400)
Well, it does make me wonder what,
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.040)
once we emerge from the pandemic,
Jason Calacanis (1:17:33.680)
whether a product market fit,
Lex Fridman (1:17:36.240)
how that evolves with Clubhouse
Lex Fridman (1:17:38.320)
and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.240)
Yeah, I know Clubhouse is a beneficiary
Jason Calacanis (1:17:41.080)
of the pandemic for sure.
Lex Fridman (1:17:42.280)
When do you think the pandemic,
Jason Calacanis (1:17:43.840)
when do you think deaths will be under,
Lex Fridman (1:17:47.440)
let's say 200 a day and we'll have 200 million people
Lex Fridman (1:17:50.320)
on the other side of this?
Lex Fridman (1:17:51.280)
Because that's kind of what it takes, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:17:52.620)
You gotta get to 150, 200 million people
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.340)
on the other side in America?
Jason Calacanis (1:17:55.760)
I haven't, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:17:57.160)
I personally stopped deeply thinking about this
Jason Calacanis (1:18:00.200)
because I've been frustrated for so long that.
Lex Fridman (1:18:03.560)
You checked out.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:04.400)
I almost checked out
Lex Fridman (1:18:05.640)
because it psychologically allows me to carry on
Jason Calacanis (1:18:10.080)
because I thought for many months now
Lex Fridman (1:18:14.240)
that testing needs to be done at scale.
Lex Fridman (1:18:16.600)
And it still hasn't gotten done.
Lex Fridman (1:18:17.780)
It hasn't been.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:18.620)
It's so ridiculous.
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.440)
We gave up basically on testing.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:20.440)
We gave up.
Lex Fridman (1:18:21.280)
Because we're, and we're all sitting there
Jason Calacanis (1:18:23.160)
waiting for vaccine to come along.
Lex Fridman (1:18:25.560)
And the distribution of the vaccine is not, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:18:29.520)
it's struggling from the same kind of things
Lex Fridman (1:18:31.200)
as the testing.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:32.040)
It's gonna take quite a bit of time.
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.680)
So it does, if everything goes great,
Jason Calacanis (1:18:36.960)
meaning there's not a second strand of the virus
Lex Fridman (1:18:39.920)
that's going to create a second major wave
Jason Calacanis (1:18:44.000)
that I am cynical enough to think
Lex Fridman (1:18:46.600)
that it won't be until mid summer
Jason Calacanis (1:18:49.660)
that we start opening back up.
Lex Fridman (1:18:51.600)
Yeah, I think it's gonna be May, June.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:53.280)
I'm a little bit earlier than you.
Lex Fridman (1:18:54.660)
I've been tracking it.
Jason Calacanis (1:18:55.500)
There are 1.5 million shots in arms a day.
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.800)
I think this vaccine's been undersold.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:00.040)
I mean, it's a miracle.
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.880)
Not one person who was in the trials died, who took it,
Lex Fridman (1:19:04.600)
and only one went to the hospital
Lex Fridman (1:19:05.960)
and they weren't even put on a ventilator.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:07.280)
So, and the hospitalizations are plummeting
Lex Fridman (1:19:10.120)
and we're at 10% now in the United States.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:12.400)
At the pace, we're going at 1.5 a day.
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.840)
I think when the Johnson & Johnson one comes out next month,
Jason Calacanis (1:19:16.840)
it'll be 3 million a day maybe, two and a half.
Lex Fridman (1:19:19.760)
And we already have 100 million people
Jason Calacanis (1:19:21.120)
who've likely had it.
Lex Fridman (1:19:22.040)
So I've been doing the math.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:22.940)
I think we're like 60 days away, February, March.
Lex Fridman (1:19:26.400)
Yeah, sometime in April, I think.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:28.120)
Anybody's gonna be able to get a shot
Lex Fridman (1:19:29.960)
and the number of deaths is gonna go below 200 a day.
Lex Fridman (1:19:33.360)
And once that happens,
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.400)
I think people have had enough of this.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:36.260)
They're just gonna go YOLO.
Lex Fridman (1:19:38.960)
But see, the crucial piece for me
Jason Calacanis (1:19:41.680)
that I've been focusing on is the social media aspect
Lex Fridman (1:19:44.740)
of how the, it's not just about the reality of deaths.
Jason Calacanis (1:19:49.480)
It's about the state of the collective intelligence
Lex Fridman (1:19:53.780)
of the human species,
Jason Calacanis (1:19:54.840)
which is determined by our communication on social media.
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.280)
So yeah, we can be collectively afraid,
Jason Calacanis (1:20:02.140)
the fear can spread, or it could be YOLO can spread,
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.760)
or it could be like all different kinds of misinformation.
Lex Fridman (1:20:10.000)
And of course, during the election year,
Lex Fridman (1:20:12.600)
the politics influences our perception of what is true
Lex Fridman (1:20:16.680)
and not, but having real rigorous nuanced conversation
Lex Fridman (1:20:21.640)
about this kind of stuff is the way out of this.
Lex Fridman (1:20:25.440)
And that's where social media really comes in
Lex Fridman (1:20:27.520)
because social media drives division,
Jason Calacanis (1:20:30.320)
where people form tribes and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.600)
And it feels like it's honestly a technology problem.
Jason Calacanis (1:20:37.400)
People say it's a human problem,
Lex Fridman (1:20:39.360)
but it just feels like, I believe humans are good.
Jason Calacanis (1:20:42.520)
Technology can enable them to be thoughtful.
Lex Fridman (1:20:44.840)
We talked earlier about the magic of Silicon Valley
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.520)
and then maybe going too far
Lex Fridman (1:20:51.160)
with the Facebook groups example,
Jason Calacanis (1:20:53.240)
where you take out all that friction.
Lex Fridman (1:20:55.640)
What happened was we used to have something called Rchron,
Jason Calacanis (1:20:59.480)
reverse chronological order.
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.120)
That's how you consume to feed.
Lex Fridman (1:21:03.000)
So any kind of social feed,
Lex Fridman (1:21:04.720)
like Twitter was in reverse chronological order.
Jason Calacanis (1:21:06.680)
The newest thing was up top
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.720)
and you would just work your way backwards.
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.760)
And so it gave this like really fresh feeling.
Lex Fridman (1:21:12.520)
And then a guy named Dave Moran
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.800)
and the team over at Facebook realized,
Lex Fridman (1:21:16.520)
you know, there are some things
Jason Calacanis (1:21:18.400)
that got a lot of attention two hours ago.
Lex Fridman (1:21:21.080)
And the stuff since then has not been as important.
Lex Fridman (1:21:23.360)
But if you miss that, there was a really good tweet
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.760)
where there was a really good update.
Jason Calacanis (1:21:27.000)
Like somebody had a baby.
Lex Fridman (1:21:30.880)
Can we get the baby one at the top?
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.920)
And it was like, well, how would we do that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.320)
How would we know that that's the important one?
Jason Calacanis (1:21:35.680)
It's like, well, let's put a like button on it
Lex Fridman (1:21:38.880)
and let's see how many comments there are.
Lex Fridman (1:21:40.360)
So if it gets a lot of likes or comments or retweets,
Lex Fridman (1:21:42.800)
let's show those first
Lex Fridman (1:21:44.120)
and then we'll kind of mix in the most recent stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:21:47.080)
And so when you're on Twitter,
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.480)
and then when Facebook did that,
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.760)
Facebook became so addicting
Jason Calacanis (1:21:52.640)
because Facebook was on,
Lex Fridman (1:21:54.000)
what has got the most engagement?
Jason Calacanis (1:21:55.760)
Put that first.
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.840)
So every time you opened up Facebook,
Jason Calacanis (1:21:58.400)
you get the dopamine hit.
Lex Fridman (1:22:00.000)
And then what happens when you see the Bar Mitzvah photo
Jason Calacanis (1:22:02.760)
or, you know, the enraging story
Lex Fridman (1:22:06.360)
about some injustice in the world?
Jason Calacanis (1:22:07.960)
You retweet it, you write a comment,
Lex Fridman (1:22:09.960)
you share it on your wall.
Lex Fridman (1:22:11.880)
And thus this addiction to the outrageous,
Lex Fridman (1:22:15.840)
the outlandish, the inspiring occurred.
Lex Fridman (1:22:18.840)
And it used to be like inspiring stuff,
Lex Fridman (1:22:20.880)
puppies or some heartwarming story.
Lex Fridman (1:22:24.000)
And then it got dark.
Lex Fridman (1:22:25.280)
And then people started to realize,
Jason Calacanis (1:22:27.000)
if I wanna show up on the top of my friend's feeds,
Lex Fridman (1:22:30.160)
if I say something controversial or I'm outraged,
Jason Calacanis (1:22:33.520)
I get to the top.
Lex Fridman (1:22:34.960)
And then that's when outrage culture came in.
Lex Fridman (1:22:36.720)
And then that's when cancel culture came in.
Lex Fridman (1:22:38.400)
Everybody started to realize,
Jason Calacanis (1:22:39.720)
if I try to cancel that person for being a racist
Lex Fridman (1:22:42.800)
or a sexist or a horrible human being
Jason Calacanis (1:22:45.760)
or whatever they did that's wrong,
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.960)
I get to the top of the feed.
Lex Fridman (1:22:49.640)
And we all collectively started playing
Lex Fridman (1:22:51.240)
a very weird video game,
Lex Fridman (1:22:52.800)
which is how outraged can we all be?
Lex Fridman (1:22:55.000)
And to get to the top of the list.
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.560)
And then of course, with Trump, he realized it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.080)
And he's like, okay, yeah,
Jason Calacanis (1:23:00.120)
I'm just gonna make fun of a celebrity
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.880)
and I get more retweets.
Jason Calacanis (1:23:03.480)
Okay, I'm gonna make fun of Rosie O'Donnell
Lex Fridman (1:23:05.040)
for being overweight or something.
Lex Fridman (1:23:06.560)
And he just starts attacking people.
Lex Fridman (1:23:08.680)
And people are like, oh my God, what did he say?
Lex Fridman (1:23:10.320)
And he copied that from Howard Stern.
Lex Fridman (1:23:12.440)
Cause he was in New York and he used to be on Howard Stern.
Jason Calacanis (1:23:14.480)
Howard Stern took over all the dialogue
Lex Fridman (1:23:16.200)
in the eighties and nineties because he was outrageous.
Lex Fridman (1:23:18.520)
And then Trump did that.
Lex Fridman (1:23:19.640)
And then social media incorporated that
Jason Calacanis (1:23:22.520)
into the operating system.
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.800)
It became the actual device of social media
Jason Calacanis (1:23:26.560)
was the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Lex Fridman (1:23:28.720)
We've got something incredible for you.
Jason Calacanis (1:23:29.960)
Everybody salivates like Pavlov's dog.
Lex Fridman (1:23:32.480)
Oh my God, I can be outraged.
Jason Calacanis (1:23:34.680)
That's what's gotta be undone.
Lex Fridman (1:23:36.200)
And the only way for that to be undone
Jason Calacanis (1:23:37.440)
is these things can't be billions of people
Lex Fridman (1:23:39.400)
where the most outrageous thing
Jason Calacanis (1:23:42.280)
that happened in the world today
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.400)
in the last five minutes is now in front of you.
Lex Fridman (1:23:47.200)
And that's why people have anxiety.
Lex Fridman (1:23:48.640)
They don't sleep and they doom scroll all night.
Jason Calacanis (1:23:51.680)
It's because the human mind was not meant to process
Lex Fridman (1:23:54.480)
this much suffering, pain, anger.
Lex Fridman (1:23:56.840)
And that's why we have all this mental health issues.
Lex Fridman (1:23:59.080)
Also, young girls or even adults watching other people
Jason Calacanis (1:24:03.720)
post their private jets and their vacations
Lex Fridman (1:24:06.800)
and YOLO adventures on their Instagram
Jason Calacanis (1:24:10.280)
to the point at which young people are now faking
Lex Fridman (1:24:13.760)
being on private jets to put on their Instagram
Lex Fridman (1:24:17.240)
and creating this crazy FOMO around their Instagrams.
Lex Fridman (1:24:23.520)
We wonder why people are unhappy.
Jason Calacanis (1:24:25.480)
If you think everybody's on a private jet
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.040)
going to some Michelin star restaurant
Jason Calacanis (1:24:29.240)
or whatever the coolest thing in the world is today,
Lex Fridman (1:24:32.160)
going to the Grammys, going to whatever,
Jason Calacanis (1:24:34.440)
Coachella, Burning Man.
Lex Fridman (1:24:36.480)
You're like, ah, but I'm home.
Jason Calacanis (1:24:39.640)
I'm in my house and I'm not at Burning Man.
Lex Fridman (1:24:43.120)
Getting inadequate.
Jason Calacanis (1:24:44.200)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:24:45.040)
So this whole system is creating
Jason Calacanis (1:24:47.040)
the wrong set of incentives.
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.280)
I tend to believe it's possible
Jason Calacanis (1:24:50.560)
to still have extremely high engagement
Lex Fridman (1:24:52.840)
and create a successful profitable business
Jason Calacanis (1:24:55.640)
while encouraging personal growth,
Lex Fridman (1:24:58.480)
like encouraging people to be the best version of themselves.
Jason Calacanis (1:25:01.240)
I just think we haven't,
Lex Fridman (1:25:02.880)
we got the first generation of social networks.
Jason Calacanis (1:25:05.520)
I think a new generation needs to be built.
Lex Fridman (1:25:07.200)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.040)
Is that your plan for a business?
Lex Fridman (1:25:09.360)
Well, I have a longer term plan in terms of ambition,
Jason Calacanis (1:25:13.200)
which is I believe in being able to have deep connection
Lex Fridman (1:25:19.720)
between human and AI systems, like partners, friends.
Jason Calacanis (1:25:23.920)
There is a connection to there with social media.
Lex Fridman (1:25:26.200)
I do think AI has a strong role to play in representing us,
Jason Calacanis (1:25:31.200)
in guiding us in how we consume social media.
Lex Fridman (1:25:37.320)
So this algorithm that controls the feed for Facebook
Jason Calacanis (1:25:41.000)
is a somewhat centralized algorithm,
Lex Fridman (1:25:43.960)
but instead to give more power to the people,
Jason Calacanis (1:25:47.040)
individuals to where each one of us have our own algorithm.
Lex Fridman (1:25:50.160)
Bring your own algorithm.
Jason Calacanis (1:25:51.200)
Bring your own algorithm.
Lex Fridman (1:25:52.040)
BYOA.
Jason Calacanis (1:25:52.880)
BYOA, I like it.
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.080)
Instead of bringing your own alcohol,
Jason Calacanis (1:25:55.800)
bring your own algorithm.
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.000)
Well, I mean, if you thought about it,
Jason Calacanis (1:25:58.280)
if we came and said, when I look at my Twitter feed,
Lex Fridman (1:26:02.160)
I would like to see the people with,
Jason Calacanis (1:26:04.440)
who are the most helpful in the world,
Lex Fridman (1:26:06.400)
generous, kind, intelligent, considered,
Jason Calacanis (1:26:11.240)
commenting on things that I don't already know about
Lex Fridman (1:26:15.160)
because I want to open my worldview.
Jason Calacanis (1:26:17.240)
That could be a beautiful thing for society.
Lex Fridman (1:26:19.160)
And actually Jack was talking about potentially on Twitter,
Jason Calacanis (1:26:22.960)
letting people bring their own algorithms
Lex Fridman (1:26:24.720)
and sort their feeds themselves.
Jason Calacanis (1:26:26.480)
This would be a wonderful thing.
Lex Fridman (1:26:27.320)
I think it's one of the reasons Clubhouse has resonated
Jason Calacanis (1:26:30.320)
is it's such a diverse group of people
Lex Fridman (1:26:32.600)
that I've been able to drop in on conversations
Jason Calacanis (1:26:35.600)
with people who are nothing like me
Lex Fridman (1:26:37.680)
and listen in and hear conversations
Jason Calacanis (1:26:40.160)
that I wouldn't normally be privy to.
Lex Fridman (1:26:42.000)
And everybody's like, oh, come join as a speaker.
Jason Calacanis (1:26:45.320)
I want to do a room with you.
Lex Fridman (1:26:46.160)
I get asked every day, can we do a room?
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.760)
Can we do a room?
Lex Fridman (1:26:48.600)
Ask an angel investor, talk about startups.
Lex Fridman (1:26:50.520)
And I'm like, my usage of Clubhouse
Lex Fridman (1:26:54.640)
is going on my Peloton treadmill,
Jason Calacanis (1:26:56.800)
putting Clubhouse on, picking a room and just listening.
Lex Fridman (1:26:59.960)
It's so delightful for me as a podcaster
Jason Calacanis (1:27:02.500)
where my job is to talk, to sit back
Lex Fridman (1:27:05.560)
and just put in a couple of miles and play chess
Lex Fridman (1:27:08.160)
and listen to a Clubhouse discussion
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.040)
that is about relationships or some fashion or hip hop
Jason Calacanis (1:27:16.000)
or whatever it is that I'm not part of.
Lex Fridman (1:27:17.600)
I just sit there and I listen and you learn.
Jason Calacanis (1:27:20.100)
It's like such a delightful thing.
Lex Fridman (1:27:21.360)
I always think about these kids who go to college
Lex Fridman (1:27:23.560)
and I've always been so jealous of these Ivy League kids.
Lex Fridman (1:27:25.420)
They go and they're like, oh, I got to go to class.
Lex Fridman (1:27:26.960)
And I'm like, I would just love to sit there
Lex Fridman (1:27:29.280)
and listen to Professor Lex talk.
Lex Fridman (1:27:33.120)
What a privilege to sit there
Lex Fridman (1:27:34.240)
and let somebody else drive and talk and listen and learn.
Jason Calacanis (1:27:38.240)
Yeah, that's the beauty of podcasting.
Lex Fridman (1:27:40.000)
But of course, Clubhouse creates a whole nother experience
Jason Calacanis (1:27:42.400)
where it's conversations, it's different.
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.240)
I think it's going to be the in between.
Jason Calacanis (1:27:45.680)
I like it as a, you release your podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.640)
Like you and I are going to release this podcast, right?
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.060)
And then at some point I'll have you on my pod
Lex Fridman (1:27:52.480)
when you want your startup.
Lex Fridman (1:27:53.400)
And then at some point somebody is going to be like,
Lex Fridman (1:27:56.600)
you and I will run into, and I ran into you.
Jason Calacanis (1:27:58.680)
I saw you were on Clubhouse the other night
Lex Fridman (1:28:00.600)
and I was busy, but I was almost going to click on you
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.960)
and say, let's start a room together.
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.240)
But you and I will start a room together
Jason Calacanis (1:28:06.480)
with Eric Weinstein or somebody
Lex Fridman (1:28:07.640)
or Sam Harris will jump in or Elon
Lex Fridman (1:28:09.300)
and we'll have a different experience,
Lex Fridman (1:28:10.880)
which would just shoot the shit.
Lex Fridman (1:28:12.160)
And it'll act as like a fabric
Lex Fridman (1:28:15.520)
and a little filler between the tent pole podcasts, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:28:19.860)
Like you and Eric, you've done three, I think, with Eric.
Lex Fridman (1:28:22.040)
Yeah, it was your four, I haven't released the fourth yet.
Jason Calacanis (1:28:24.200)
Oh, okay, so I watched all three
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.400)
because I really thought your you way
Lex Fridman (1:28:28.440)
and him like giving you advice
Lex Fridman (1:28:30.720)
is very interesting dynamic.
Jason Calacanis (1:28:32.160)
I thought it was very interesting dynamic.
Lex Fridman (1:28:34.560)
And I find him like a fascinating cat.
Jason Calacanis (1:28:36.520)
We know everybody in common, except we've never met.
Lex Fridman (1:28:39.560)
It's very weird because you think about the social graph
Jason Calacanis (1:28:41.920)
in the real world.
Lex Fridman (1:28:42.760)
This is why I think augmented reality
Jason Calacanis (1:28:44.240)
is going to be such an amazing product.
Lex Fridman (1:28:48.440)
I just have one killer feature I want
Jason Calacanis (1:28:50.120)
for augmented reality, we wear our glasses.
Lex Fridman (1:28:54.160)
And when I look at you above your head,
Jason Calacanis (1:28:57.000)
I see the relationships we have
Lex Fridman (1:28:59.440)
and the things we've done together, right?
Lex Fridman (1:29:01.840)
So I see, oh, you both know Sam Harris
Lex Fridman (1:29:04.160)
or you had Elon on the podcast on this date
Jason Calacanis (1:29:06.880)
or you and I were both at Burning Man in 2016.
Lex Fridman (1:29:11.160)
So it's the most meaningful element
Jason Calacanis (1:29:12.780)
of our connection in the network, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:29:14.540)
And then, cause we would discover that through small talk,
Lex Fridman (1:29:16.920)
but imagine you're like at a party and you look
Lex Fridman (1:29:19.400)
and it just, people glow and you just see a glow
Jason Calacanis (1:29:23.640)
around a person and like green means
Lex Fridman (1:29:25.600)
you have some financial relationship.
Jason Calacanis (1:29:27.060)
Blue means you have some friendship one
Lex Fridman (1:29:29.040)
or yellow means you have friendship one.
Jason Calacanis (1:29:30.520)
Blue means you know nothing about each other.
Lex Fridman (1:29:33.160)
You have no connections.
Jason Calacanis (1:29:34.080)
You're like, wow, these blue people have no connection to.
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.000)
These people, that one's glowing red.
Jason Calacanis (1:29:38.760)
We know seven or more people in common.
Lex Fridman (1:29:41.040)
And those are the seven people.
Jason Calacanis (1:29:42.240)
Oh, we should go talk about how we know each other.
Lex Fridman (1:29:45.200)
That could, and that sort of happened with Facebook member
Jason Calacanis (1:29:47.480)
or MySpace where you were like, oh, you know that person,
Lex Fridman (1:29:49.440)
friend of a friend.
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.720)
But that's what is going to be AR is like,
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.600)
this is why I think if Apple figures out AR or Snapchat
Lex Fridman (1:29:57.320)
and they just have those glasses, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:29:59.000)
forget about VR, it's just nauseating and whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:30:02.880)
but AR where you put the glasses on,
Lex Fridman (1:30:04.560)
you see the real world, but you augment it.
Jason Calacanis (1:30:06.760)
You make a, just like you were saying,
Lex Fridman (1:30:08.760)
you make a frictionless, a very low friction
Jason Calacanis (1:30:12.320)
to make a deep human connection
Lex Fridman (1:30:13.880)
because you have all the basic elements there already.
Jason Calacanis (1:30:17.080)
Now think about the unintended consequences
Lex Fridman (1:30:18.720)
of what I just described.
Jason Calacanis (1:30:20.560)
It could get creepy and weird.
Lex Fridman (1:30:21.800)
The privacy thing.
Jason Calacanis (1:30:23.640)
I mean, people will, here's the thing,
Lex Fridman (1:30:25.960)
people, your privacy is an illusion.
Jason Calacanis (1:30:28.560)
Like all this information is there.
Lex Fridman (1:30:30.640)
And then people are more than willing to give up privacy
Jason Calacanis (1:30:35.440)
in exchange for some value, you know, it's a value trade.
Lex Fridman (1:30:39.600)
And giving, if my Tesla,
Jason Calacanis (1:30:43.560)
when I'm driving in the direction of my house,
Lex Fridman (1:30:45.420)
just starts the navigation and saves me three clicks
Lex Fridman (1:30:47.800)
and that friction's gone,
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.440)
I'm willing to give Tesla my location
Lex Fridman (1:30:51.760)
and my home address, right?
Lex Fridman (1:30:53.660)
I'm not willing to give Zuckerberg anything
Jason Calacanis (1:30:55.040)
because I don't trust him, but you get the idea.
Lex Fridman (1:30:56.960)
I mean, it will be that way with like DNA and other things
Jason Calacanis (1:30:59.240)
at some point we'll just be like, yeah, just take my DNA.
Lex Fridman (1:31:01.200)
Like I don't, yeah, sure.
Jason Calacanis (1:31:02.320)
People can look and see that I'm a mental midget
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.040)
and my IQ is like lower than,
Jason Calacanis (1:31:06.800)
I don't want to bring the bell curve up or whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:31:08.560)
but you could figure out,
Jason Calacanis (1:31:10.960)
like if we all put our DNA in a sequence online
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.880)
and be like, oh yeah, you know, Lex has got 10 more IQ points
Jason Calacanis (1:31:17.120)
than Jcal and, you know, Sam's got 10 more than Lex.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.040)
And all of a sudden people are like all bed out of shape
Lex Fridman (1:31:22.200)
about it, but what if they, we did that?
Lex Fridman (1:31:23.880)
And they were like, and by the way, you also,
Jason Calacanis (1:31:25.600)
all three of you are going to get Parkinson's
Lex Fridman (1:31:27.440)
unless you do X, Y, and Z,
Jason Calacanis (1:31:29.440)
unless you eat more blueberries or whatever we figure out.
Lex Fridman (1:31:31.880)
They're going to accept it pretty quickly.
Jason Calacanis (1:31:33.440)
Yeah, that's brave new world.
Lex Fridman (1:31:35.240)
Brave new world.
Jason Calacanis (1:31:36.120)
I have to ask you, you're, just like you were saying,
Lex Fridman (1:31:39.780)
you're one of the world experts in investing
Lex Fridman (1:31:42.660)
and in startups, yeah, VC and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.920)
From the perspective of the startup,
Jason Calacanis (1:31:50.600)
I was always kind of skeptical of raising money.
Lex Fridman (1:31:54.120)
It feels like people do it too quickly, too easily,
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.320)
but I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
Lex Fridman (1:32:00.420)
When is the, when should a startup raise money?
Lex Fridman (1:32:04.520)
And from the perspective of the investor,
Lex Fridman (1:32:07.160)
when should the investor invest in a startup?
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.120)
Like, is there a timing thing here?
Lex Fridman (1:32:12.080)
Is there a, what, yeah, what?
Jason Calacanis (1:32:14.520)
It's a very important question
Lex Fridman (1:32:16.560)
because the venture capital community
Jason Calacanis (1:32:19.460)
is only going to fund, you know, sub 1% of enterprises
Lex Fridman (1:32:24.120)
started in the United States every year,
Jason Calacanis (1:32:26.080)
like maybe 10 basis points of them, like one in a thousand.
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.840)
And the reason is it's jet fuel.
Jason Calacanis (1:32:33.360)
You only want to take that money
Lex Fridman (1:32:35.080)
if you really want to build something big
Lex Fridman (1:32:36.880)
and you want to build it fast.
Lex Fridman (1:32:38.400)
And when you put jet fuel behind a startup,
Jason Calacanis (1:32:42.080)
as we've seen with other rockets,
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.560)
things can blow up and people can die.
Jason Calacanis (1:32:45.920)
You know, it's not people literally dying,
Lex Fridman (1:32:47.280)
but the business can go up in smoke, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:32:49.340)
Like rockets get blown up all the time at SpaceX
Lex Fridman (1:32:52.880)
as part of their ambitious plans.
Lex Fridman (1:32:54.160)
And startups, seven out of 10 startups we invest in,
Lex Fridman (1:32:57.240)
go to zero.
Jason Calacanis (1:32:58.600)
Now, if you were to start the business
Lex Fridman (1:33:00.160)
and only build it off customer revenue
Lex Fridman (1:33:01.900)
and use your own money and go nice and slow
Lex Fridman (1:33:03.980)
and grow 10% a year,
Jason Calacanis (1:33:05.620)
the chances of you blowing up the rocket are very low
Lex Fridman (1:33:09.360)
because you're riding a bicycle.
Jason Calacanis (1:33:12.280)
You can go a little faster,
Lex Fridman (1:33:13.400)
but the bicycle can only go so fast.
Lex Fridman (1:33:15.560)
And once you start taking that money,
Lex Fridman (1:33:18.300)
the way venture capital is constructed
Jason Calacanis (1:33:21.880)
as in the mix of like MIT or Harvard's endowments is,
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.180)
you know, we're going to put some money into safe things
Lex Fridman (1:33:31.240)
and then we're going to have
Lex Fridman (1:33:32.080)
these really binary things over here.
Lex Fridman (1:33:33.800)
And they probably put 5% in venture capital traditionally.
Lex Fridman (1:33:38.400)
It's grown to 20% just as a function
Jason Calacanis (1:33:40.640)
of how successful it's been.
Lex Fridman (1:33:42.720)
So, you know, the Harvards of the world and MIT
Jason Calacanis (1:33:44.920)
is probably want five or 10% in venture,
Lex Fridman (1:33:48.040)
but it's grown to 25% because, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:33:50.120)
companies like Airbnb and Uber have grown so big and Tesla.
Lex Fridman (1:33:53.540)
But the goal is in these venture funds,
Jason Calacanis (1:33:56.680)
we're going to invest in 30 names
Lex Fridman (1:33:58.660)
and one or two of them are going to return three times
Jason Calacanis (1:34:01.660)
the capital we've deployed.
Lex Fridman (1:34:03.000)
So it's a $300 million fund and there's 30 names
Lex Fridman (1:34:05.200)
and they each got 10 million.
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.440)
That means one of the 10 million
Jason Calacanis (1:34:08.360)
is going to return the fund plus.
Lex Fridman (1:34:11.120)
So that means it has to grow 30X and then 60X
Jason Calacanis (1:34:15.920)
to double the fund.
Lex Fridman (1:34:17.000)
And you're really supposed to be doing
Jason Calacanis (1:34:18.600)
three times cash on cash.
Lex Fridman (1:34:19.960)
So that $300 million funds,
Jason Calacanis (1:34:21.840)
the expectation is in 10 years to return 900 million,
Lex Fridman (1:34:25.040)
triple the person's money as opposed to the stock market,
Jason Calacanis (1:34:27.200)
which doubles your money in the same period.
Lex Fridman (1:34:29.360)
So you're supposed to do 25% annualized returns
Jason Calacanis (1:34:32.720)
in order to triple the money.
Lex Fridman (1:34:35.520)
And maybe I have an outlying chance
Jason Calacanis (1:34:36.960)
of four or five times the money,
Lex Fridman (1:34:38.060)
which does happen sometimes when you have an outlier
Jason Calacanis (1:34:39.840)
in your portfolio like Uber or Facebook was.
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.660)
And what that means is the venture capitalist behavior
Jason Calacanis (1:34:46.600)
in the game they're playing is different
Lex Fridman (1:34:47.840)
than you as the founder.
Jason Calacanis (1:34:48.920)
You as the founder, you may really care about this
Lex Fridman (1:34:51.560)
and it dying really matters to you.
Lex Fridman (1:34:53.800)
And then you got a venture capitalist who's like,
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.160)
we're betting on 30 names,
Jason Calacanis (1:34:56.080)
we need two of them to hit it out of the park, maybe three,
Lex Fridman (1:34:59.680)
and nothing else is meaningful.
Lex Fridman (1:35:01.340)
So now you start thinking about the game theory there.
Lex Fridman (1:35:05.820)
You're dealing with money that is coming in
Jason Calacanis (1:35:09.780)
that only cares about you going 100X.
Lex Fridman (1:35:13.660)
It's a whole different ball game.
Jason Calacanis (1:35:17.100)
Whereas if you build off revenue, you don't have to do that.
Lex Fridman (1:35:19.180)
And if you look at a company like com.com,
Jason Calacanis (1:35:20.900)
we invested at 5 million, the next round they did was 250.
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.300)
They were so capital efficient
Jason Calacanis (1:35:25.220)
that they grew from $10,000 a month in revenue
Lex Fridman (1:35:27.900)
to millions of dollars a month in revenue
Jason Calacanis (1:35:30.180)
over those four years since we invested
Lex Fridman (1:35:32.300)
and they didn't raise money in between.
Jason Calacanis (1:35:34.780)
It was unbelievable.
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.980)
And I've only seen this happen three or four times.
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.780)
So it doesn't happen all this capital efficient meaning
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.980)
based on customer revenue alone
Jason Calacanis (1:35:43.540)
plus some small amount of fundraising, you're able to go.
Lex Fridman (1:35:47.100)
Like how hard is it to do that?
Jason Calacanis (1:35:49.500)
It takes extreme product market fit.
Lex Fridman (1:35:52.500)
You have to have a great price for your product
Jason Calacanis (1:35:54.380)
that has a great margin.
Lex Fridman (1:35:56.860)
Yeah, and if you're doing something in hardware,
Jason Calacanis (1:35:59.260)
it's probably impossible
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.380)
because it's super capital intensive.
Lex Fridman (1:36:01.660)
So it's probably gotta be a software business.
Lex Fridman (1:36:03.780)
Hardware businesses take a lot more.
Jason Calacanis (1:36:05.720)
Do venture capitals get in the way at all of the business
Lex Fridman (1:36:08.620)
or is it possible to get out of the way?
Jason Calacanis (1:36:11.060)
Yeah, if you get young venture capitalists
Lex Fridman (1:36:13.500)
who are starting their career,
Jason Calacanis (1:36:14.780)
they're very nervous and scared
Lex Fridman (1:36:16.660)
because they're putting all these bets.
Lex Fridman (1:36:18.780)
And then there's a very weird thing that happens.
Lex Fridman (1:36:21.820)
The bad news comes first.
Lex Fridman (1:36:23.860)
So companies that don't work out
Lex Fridman (1:36:26.860)
go out of business immediately.
Lex Fridman (1:36:28.660)
So if it's not gonna be Com or Robinhood or Uber,
Lex Fridman (1:36:32.980)
you know you have one of those great successes
Jason Calacanis (1:36:35.380)
somewhere in your five, six, seven, eight as an investor.
Lex Fridman (1:36:38.560)
What is the first five years like?
Jason Calacanis (1:36:40.420)
First five years, you feel like an idiot.
Lex Fridman (1:36:42.620)
Let's say you make these 10 bets.
Jason Calacanis (1:36:47.740)
In year two, two or three of them come back
Lex Fridman (1:36:49.640)
and they don't have product market fit
Lex Fridman (1:36:50.820)
and they're out of money.
Lex Fridman (1:36:51.820)
And they say, can we have more money?
Jason Calacanis (1:36:52.820)
You say, no, we have to go get it from somebody else
Lex Fridman (1:36:54.620)
because you have to prove
Jason Calacanis (1:36:55.440)
that there's still a market for it.
Lex Fridman (1:36:56.740)
We may keep our pro rata.
Jason Calacanis (1:36:58.220)
We may put a little bit in
Lex Fridman (1:36:59.420)
to maintain our percentage ownership,
Lex Fridman (1:37:00.980)
but we're not going to give you another big chunk of money.
Lex Fridman (1:37:04.980)
And that company dies.
Lex Fridman (1:37:06.240)
So now you've got 10 million, poof, up in smoke.
Lex Fridman (1:37:08.820)
Boom, 10 million up in smoke.
Lex Fridman (1:37:10.260)
So this is called the J curve
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.780)
where your performance goes down.
Lex Fridman (1:37:14.440)
And then it's only in years four or five and six
Lex Fridman (1:37:16.460)
it starts going up.
Lex Fridman (1:37:17.300)
And what you're seeing right now is the people
Lex Fridman (1:37:18.820)
who started like I did in 2000,
Jason Calacanis (1:37:21.060)
you know, just 11, 12 years ago.
Lex Fridman (1:37:22.620)
In 2009, I started investing.
Jason Calacanis (1:37:24.660)
We all look like geniuses.
Lex Fridman (1:37:26.380)
Why?
Jason Calacanis (1:37:27.460)
We're at the end of the cycle.
Lex Fridman (1:37:29.020)
We invested after when the stock market was on the floor
Jason Calacanis (1:37:32.460)
after the financial crisis.
Lex Fridman (1:37:34.100)
And it's gone straight up since.
Lex Fridman (1:37:35.780)
So everybody looked,
Lex Fridman (1:37:36.620)
there's a couple of little blips in there,
Lex Fridman (1:37:37.500)
but generally speaking,
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.580)
there hasn't been like a major crash
Jason Calacanis (1:37:40.460)
with the exception of the pandemic crash,
Lex Fridman (1:37:41.600)
but that bounced right back.
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.860)
And so, you know, it takes a decade to figure out
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.740)
if you're good at it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.380)
And then if the market crashes again,
Lex Fridman (1:37:48.780)
everybody feels like an idiot again,
Jason Calacanis (1:37:49.880)
the cycle starts again.
Lex Fridman (1:37:50.900)
So you are now as a founder,
Jason Calacanis (1:37:53.820)
you are now inserting yourself into that casino.
Lex Fridman (1:37:56.880)
And now you've got all these other forces
Jason Calacanis (1:37:58.540)
pushing and pulling.
Lex Fridman (1:37:59.860)
And you're growing,
Jason Calacanis (1:38:00.900)
let's say your company was growing 50%.
Lex Fridman (1:38:03.220)
You feel like, wow, I'm successful.
Jason Calacanis (1:38:04.460)
I made a million dollars last year.
Lex Fridman (1:38:05.620)
Now I'm doing a million and a half.
Lex Fridman (1:38:07.420)
And the first thing a VC is gonna say to you is,
Lex Fridman (1:38:09.460)
how do we triple?
Jason Calacanis (1:38:10.300)
We're growing too slow.
Lex Fridman (1:38:12.140)
See, but that's, like you said,
Jason Calacanis (1:38:13.180)
that beautifully is a rocket fuel.
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.420)
It's, in a sense, it's a kind of motivation.
Jason Calacanis (1:38:19.020)
It's a drive.
Lex Fridman (1:38:19.840)
I mean, it's a positive.
Lex Fridman (1:38:21.020)
So if you want that.
Lex Fridman (1:38:22.060)
Yes, if you want that.
Jason Calacanis (1:38:23.700)
If you want that,
Lex Fridman (1:38:24.580)
if you want to go to Navy SEAL school,
Jason Calacanis (1:38:27.100)
you're gonna be in pain
Lex Fridman (1:38:28.100)
and they're gonna put that hose in your face
Jason Calacanis (1:38:29.820)
while you're underwater
Lex Fridman (1:38:30.940)
with your hands tied behind your back in the pool
Lex Fridman (1:38:32.740)
and you're gonna be choking.
Lex Fridman (1:38:34.020)
And they may have to do CPR on you.
Lex Fridman (1:38:35.580)
And like every couple of years, tragically,
Lex Fridman (1:38:38.540)
somebody dies in Navy SEAL school.
Jason Calacanis (1:38:40.260)
Yeah, well.
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.180)
Does it mean we're getting rid of the Navy SEALs?
Jason Calacanis (1:38:42.700)
Brock, if he dies, he dies.
Lex Fridman (1:38:43.940)
I don't know if you know David Goggins
Jason Calacanis (1:38:45.340)
as by any chance.
Lex Fridman (1:38:46.180)
I do.
Jason Calacanis (1:38:47.000)
I mean, I don't know him personally,
Lex Fridman (1:38:47.840)
but oh my Lord.
Lex Fridman (1:38:48.820)
So I'm running 48 miles together with him in person
Lex Fridman (1:38:52.260)
in a month.
Lex Fridman (1:38:53.100)
What, you're doing an ultra marathon?
Lex Fridman (1:38:55.380)
With him and probably other stuff
Jason Calacanis (1:38:58.520)
because he enjoys just breaking people,
Lex Fridman (1:39:01.100)
making them cry.
Jason Calacanis (1:39:01.940)
Oh my God, I'm so jelly.
Lex Fridman (1:39:03.180)
So no, well, I offered,
Jason Calacanis (1:39:05.140)
we agreed a while ago to do a podcast
Lex Fridman (1:39:08.260)
and he's like, oh yeah, come, we'll do it this day.
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.980)
Is he in the Bay Area?
Lex Fridman (1:39:13.100)
I don't know where the hell he is,
Lex Fridman (1:39:14.340)
but we're doing it.
Lex Fridman (1:39:15.460)
And I don't think I'm supposed to say where it is,
Lex Fridman (1:39:17.580)
but it's not anywhere close to anywhere of this.
Lex Fridman (1:39:19.540)
It's in the middle of nowhere.
Lex Fridman (1:39:21.220)
But he seems to be in a bunch of different locations.
Lex Fridman (1:39:24.220)
Like he's in Oregon or something like that.
Lex Fridman (1:39:27.260)
What does he do for outside of writing books
Lex Fridman (1:39:29.260)
and being inspirational?
Lex Fridman (1:39:30.100)
Does he actually train people or like?
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.900)
No, he's just, he's a full time insane.
Jason Calacanis (1:39:35.660)
Like he fights forest fires like for a few months a year
Lex Fridman (1:39:40.420)
as a farmer, like unpaid labor.
Jason Calacanis (1:39:42.900)
Like he, you know, there's a bunch of people
Lex Fridman (1:39:45.020)
who are like him, like Navy Seals and so on
Jason Calacanis (1:39:47.700)
that kind of make a career,
Lex Fridman (1:39:49.300)
automotivational speak and all that kind of stuff.
Jason Calacanis (1:39:51.220)
He's not interested in any of that.
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.100)
He's literally interested in just doing hard shit
Jason Calacanis (1:39:57.940)
all the time.
Lex Fridman (1:39:59.100)
Breaking himself.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:00.100)
Breaking himself personally.
Lex Fridman (1:40:00.940)
He seems like he wants to break himself.
Lex Fridman (1:40:03.180)
And that book is amazing.
Lex Fridman (1:40:04.940)
And the audio book's amazing
Jason Calacanis (1:40:06.380)
when he's talking about how fat he was
Lex Fridman (1:40:08.220)
and how he just had to go and keep running
Lex Fridman (1:40:10.900)
and his like legs are broken and he's just super pain
Lex Fridman (1:40:14.420)
and he just goes through it.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:15.260)
It's really inspiring.
Lex Fridman (1:40:16.580)
Inspiring thing also.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:17.660)
You could have videotaped yourself doing this.
Lex Fridman (1:40:19.620)
I can't wait to see you get destroyed.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:22.300)
This is gonna be so entertaining for the lax audience.
Lex Fridman (1:40:26.900)
The pain.
Lex Fridman (1:40:28.340)
But the other inspiring thing is he's happily married
Lex Fridman (1:40:32.260)
and there's a partnership there that's, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:40:34.260)
everybody finds this attention as a push and pull
Lex Fridman (1:40:38.020)
that's beautiful, I think.
Lex Fridman (1:40:40.260)
But in speaking of a beautiful push and pull,
Lex Fridman (1:40:44.820)
how about that transition?
Jason Calacanis (1:40:45.940)
Yeah, here we go.
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.420)
You and Chamath on, he's a friend of yours.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:50.900)
Besties. Besties, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:40:52.700)
Yeah, good friend.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:53.540)
I mean, there's very few people in my life,
Lex Fridman (1:40:55.420)
him, Elon, David Sachs, John Brockmans.
Jason Calacanis (1:40:58.940)
Very few people have supported me as much as those folks.
Lex Fridman (1:41:01.180)
I mean, I'm a huge debt.
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.460)
So he's also cohost on the All In podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:41:05.660)
We taped episode 21 today.
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.420)
Oh, today?
Lex Fridman (1:41:08.260)
Yeah, every Friday now.
Jason Calacanis (1:41:09.540)
They wanna do every Friday.
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.380)
They're addicted like me and you are to podcasts.
Lex Fridman (1:41:12.060)
So you're going to release it when?
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.260)
It's probably released as we're sitting here.
Jason Calacanis (1:41:16.260)
Okay, beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:41:17.820)
Special guest on it.
Jason Calacanis (1:41:18.780)
We had Draymond Green from the Warriors phone in.
Lex Fridman (1:41:22.020)
So we had our first guest.
Jason Calacanis (1:41:23.180)
Awesome.
Lex Fridman (1:41:24.020)
Yeah, so it's really funny
Jason Calacanis (1:41:25.140)
because he plays poker with us and we're all besties, so.
Lex Fridman (1:41:28.100)
Beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:41:28.940)
So you guys went pretty heated against each other
Lex Fridman (1:41:33.100)
versus on Robin Hood.
Jason Calacanis (1:41:35.060)
There's just two things I wanna ask.
Lex Fridman (1:41:37.540)
First, on the actual Robin Hood discussion
Lex Fridman (1:41:41.020)
and the Wall Street Best discussion,
Lex Fridman (1:41:42.860)
can you steel man his argument?
Lex Fridman (1:41:44.340)
What was the nature of the disagreement?
Lex Fridman (1:41:45.900)
Where, yeah, what is the little,
Jason Calacanis (1:41:49.020)
because I don't think it's as big as spaces
Lex Fridman (1:41:51.700)
it came off as sounding.
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.940)
What is the nature of the disagreement?
Lex Fridman (1:41:55.420)
He felt that Robin Hood turned off trading
Jason Calacanis (1:42:01.380)
because the hedge funds told them to
Lex Fridman (1:42:04.260)
and that they were bowing down
Jason Calacanis (1:42:07.220)
to the pressure of the hedge funds.
Lex Fridman (1:42:08.420)
That's not true, but in a vacuum of information,
Jason Calacanis (1:42:12.020)
you know what happens to people's minds,
Lex Fridman (1:42:13.580)
conspiracy theories abound.
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.060)
And sometimes there is a conspiracy theory
Lex Fridman (1:42:16.980)
and sometimes there's just the appearance of impropriety
Jason Calacanis (1:42:21.140)
or a bunch of related things.
Lex Fridman (1:42:24.140)
Like when you look at the Trump situation with Russia,
Jason Calacanis (1:42:26.860)
like was Trump trying to coordinate with Russia
Lex Fridman (1:42:29.980)
or the Russians just screwing with a bunch of like neophyte
Jason Calacanis (1:42:34.460)
idiotic dipshits like Donald Trump Jr.
Lex Fridman (1:42:37.820)
who don't know any better.
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.100)
And they don't know that you shouldn't meet with the Russians
Lex Fridman (1:42:42.220)
and if you do meet with the Russians,
Jason Calacanis (1:42:43.860)
you are probably a useful idiot.
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.260)
You probably should tell the FBI.
Jason Calacanis (1:42:46.780)
Like they're just a bunch of idiots in all likelihood,
Lex Fridman (1:42:48.980)
who knows?
Lex Fridman (1:42:49.820)
And there's a vacuum of information.
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.340)
And there's a vacuum of information, we don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:42:53.020)
And the Russians are trying to compromise everybody.
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.180)
So would you call it a conspiracy
Lex Fridman (1:42:57.660)
or would you call it an attempted conspiracy?
Lex Fridman (1:43:02.260)
There was no conspiracy here.
Lex Fridman (1:43:03.380)
What it was was Robin Hood needed to raise billions
Lex Fridman (1:43:07.300)
of dollars to say solvent in all likelihood.
Lex Fridman (1:43:10.420)
And they weren't allowed to talk about it.
Lex Fridman (1:43:13.340)
So they were forced into not talking about it
Jason Calacanis (1:43:15.900)
in all likelihood and had to come up with that money
Lex Fridman (1:43:18.300)
or shut down.
Lex Fridman (1:43:19.140)
And then what got me upset with Chamath
Lex Fridman (1:43:21.620)
and we had a talk afterwards that people don't know about,
Jason Calacanis (1:43:25.340)
I'll talk about it here for the first time.
Lex Fridman (1:43:27.300)
On Sunday, we had to have a little, we had to air it out.
Jason Calacanis (1:43:30.980)
Yeah, in the episode after you guys sound like
Lex Fridman (1:43:33.100)
you've had a private, you've made up.
Jason Calacanis (1:43:35.380)
We had a private discussion, just one on one.
Lex Fridman (1:43:37.580)
And we said, listen, we love each other, we're besties.
Jason Calacanis (1:43:39.700)
We've always been there for each other.
Lex Fridman (1:43:41.380)
What happened here?
Lex Fridman (1:43:42.740)
And what happened there is I'm fiercely loyal to my folks,
Lex Fridman (1:43:46.260)
whether it's Chamath or Travis from Uber or Saks or whoever.
Jason Calacanis (1:43:50.220)
I'm just a loyal guy.
Lex Fridman (1:43:51.860)
And I'm always ride or die with my founders.
Jason Calacanis (1:43:54.140)
If I invest in them, even if they make a mistake
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.100)
and Uber made plenty of mistakes,
Jason Calacanis (1:43:57.340)
I always went on CNBC, on my podcast and said,
Lex Fridman (1:43:59.980)
hey, we're gonna fix these things.
Jason Calacanis (1:44:01.540)
I'm in touch with the team.
Lex Fridman (1:44:03.340)
Mistakes were made, we're gonna solve them.
Jason Calacanis (1:44:06.140)
This is a group of people with great intent
Lex Fridman (1:44:08.300)
who want to make the world a better place.
Lex Fridman (1:44:10.420)
And you know what?
Lex Fridman (1:44:11.260)
I was hated for a period of time with Uber.
Jason Calacanis (1:44:13.380)
I was hated for it last week with Robinhood.
Lex Fridman (1:44:15.540)
I got a lot of blowback.
Lex Fridman (1:44:18.460)
But I think in both of those cases, eventually I was right.
Lex Fridman (1:44:20.780)
Uber is doing great stuff in the world.
Jason Calacanis (1:44:22.220)
Robinhood is doing great stuff in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:44:23.980)
And I like to be loyal to my investments
Lex Fridman (1:44:26.020)
and my partners to just,
Lex Fridman (1:44:27.700)
I feel like if you invest and you're on the team,
Jason Calacanis (1:44:31.300)
you have really three choices.
Lex Fridman (1:44:32.580)
You either fight for your team, you can go silent,
Jason Calacanis (1:44:35.540)
or you can throw your team under the bus.
Lex Fridman (1:44:37.100)
And I've watched investors throw the team
Jason Calacanis (1:44:39.160)
that they invested in that made them a bunch of money
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.060)
under the bus, not acceptable to me.
Lex Fridman (1:44:42.860)
And being quiet's not acceptable to me.
Lex Fridman (1:44:44.420)
So I always ask the founder, do you want me to,
Lex Fridman (1:44:46.220)
is it okay if I go out and defend you publicly?
Lex Fridman (1:44:48.560)
If they say yes, I do it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:49.980)
And then.
Lex Fridman (1:44:50.820)
That's beautiful, by the way,
Jason Calacanis (1:44:51.660)
because what else do we have in this world
Lex Fridman (1:44:52.620)
if not friendship?
Jason Calacanis (1:44:53.700)
Loyalty means everything to me.
Lex Fridman (1:44:54.620)
I grew up in Brooklyn where if you were not loyal
Lex Fridman (1:44:57.940)
and you were not loyal to your crew,
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.860)
then you were a Ronin.
Jason Calacanis (1:45:03.580)
You were out there on your own flailing in the,
Lex Fridman (1:45:07.700)
trust me, you do not want to be on your own
Jason Calacanis (1:45:09.640)
in 1970s, 80s, Brooklyn, Manhattan.
Lex Fridman (1:45:12.260)
You need to have a crew with you.
Jason Calacanis (1:45:13.360)
I've gotten into, you don't want to get into a fight
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.780)
with 10 guys and be alone or just be with,
Jason Calacanis (1:45:18.260)
you need a crew to survive.
Lex Fridman (1:45:19.940)
So I just learned early on, my dad owned a bar,
Jason Calacanis (1:45:23.840)
just drilled into me being loyal.
Lex Fridman (1:45:25.460)
And so for whatever reason,
Jason Calacanis (1:45:26.540)
I'm a bulldog when it comes to loyalty.
Lex Fridman (1:45:28.300)
And Shemov came out and said,
Jason Calacanis (1:45:30.280)
these guys need to go to jail and they're scumbags.
Lex Fridman (1:45:32.980)
And I'm trying to defend them.
Lex Fridman (1:45:34.540)
And I'm in a position where I can't defend them
Lex Fridman (1:45:36.700)
because I don't have complete information.
Jason Calacanis (1:45:38.220)
There is no complete information.
Lex Fridman (1:45:39.460)
It's in the heat of the moment.
Lex Fridman (1:45:40.740)
And then it becomes the number one story.
Lex Fridman (1:45:43.300)
And it's my number three investment.
Lex Fridman (1:45:46.060)
And Shemov has a competing company, SoFi.
Lex Fridman (1:45:49.260)
And he's killing my guys.
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.940)
And then I started killing his guys.
Lex Fridman (1:45:53.100)
And then all of a sudden we're like,
Jason Calacanis (1:45:54.260)
wait a second, we're best friends.
Lex Fridman (1:45:56.980)
And we're swinging our swords at each other.
Lex Fridman (1:46:00.400)
And we're a group of the seven samurai who fight together.
Lex Fridman (1:46:04.700)
When did we turn on each other?
Lex Fridman (1:46:06.540)
And then everybody else who's on the pod,
Lex Fridman (1:46:07.980)
the two Davids, you know, both on the spectrum a bit,
Jason Calacanis (1:46:10.780)
they got a little Asperger's or whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:46:13.020)
No offense, Les.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:15.260)
None taken.
Lex Fridman (1:46:16.080)
None taken.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:16.920)
I'm not saying, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:46:17.760)
but there is, you're into AI and you might be somewhere.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:22.500)
It's not a coincidence, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:46:23.740)
Might not be a coincidence.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:24.580)
Anyway, we upgraded the two Davids firmware.
Lex Fridman (1:46:26.200)
We're gonna upgrade your firmware after this.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:27.620)
I'll give you, yeah, you're on the 1.5.
Lex Fridman (1:46:30.700)
You have the three emotions now.
Lex Fridman (1:46:32.060)
Or should we add a fourth?
Lex Fridman (1:46:32.900)
Do you wanna go with joy?
Jason Calacanis (1:46:34.140)
I'm on the 2.0 already.
Lex Fridman (1:46:35.460)
You're on the 2.0, you got the joy.
Lex Fridman (1:46:37.020)
How's it working out for you, the joy chip?
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.620)
It's difficult.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:39.460)
It's painful. It's difficult.
Lex Fridman (1:46:40.280)
You'll get there.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:41.120)
Just let it happen, Lex.
Lex Fridman (1:46:42.180)
Just let the joy happen.
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.940)
So anyway, we just talked about it offline
Lex Fridman (1:46:47.220)
and we decided like, listen,
Jason Calacanis (1:46:49.200)
we didn't pregame that episode.
Lex Fridman (1:46:52.020)
And I happened to be skiing with my family.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:53.860)
I had taken the first like vacation
Lex Fridman (1:46:55.500)
since this goddamn pandemic started.
Lex Fridman (1:46:57.540)
And I was having a wonderful time.
Lex Fridman (1:46:58.820)
And then this whole thing blows up.
Jason Calacanis (1:46:59.900)
I'm coming off the mountain,
Lex Fridman (1:47:01.820)
just having a great time with my daughter skiing.
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.020)
And you know, and then I'm mixing it up with him.
Lex Fridman (1:47:06.100)
And you know, he had a short fuse about it
Jason Calacanis (1:47:07.940)
because he was triggered, he told me,
Lex Fridman (1:47:09.300)
because he really feels like he's fighting
Jason Calacanis (1:47:12.200)
to defend, you know, the every man.
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.500)
And I was like, that's what my team's doing.
Jason Calacanis (1:47:16.500)
That's why they named the company Robinhood.
Lex Fridman (1:47:19.180)
We're on the same side here.
Lex Fridman (1:47:21.340)
And then over time,
Lex Fridman (1:47:22.180)
we've started to see the explanation come out.
Lex Fridman (1:47:23.660)
And you know, people who are friends
Lex Fridman (1:47:26.780)
are gonna have disagreements.
Jason Calacanis (1:47:28.120)
In the podcast, it happened to happen very publicly.
Lex Fridman (1:47:30.580)
And we didn't know it was gonna become
Jason Calacanis (1:47:32.080)
the number one story in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:47:35.220)
If Trump still had his Twitter handle,
Jason Calacanis (1:47:36.980)
this would not have been a story.
Lex Fridman (1:47:39.220)
Trump would have said something about GameStop
Lex Fridman (1:47:41.540)
and he would have coopted the entire conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:47:44.220)
So in a way, going back to our censorship discussion,
Jason Calacanis (1:47:47.620)
I might actually be in favor of Trump being censored
Lex Fridman (1:47:51.180)
only because how delightful has it been since January 20th
Jason Calacanis (1:47:57.300)
that we can all focus on something other than him.
Lex Fridman (1:48:01.380)
He was exhausting.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:03.260)
I mean, the amount of cycles he took on our processors.
Lex Fridman (1:48:06.620)
He monetized the conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:48:08.940)
And now this is a little bit more of a distributed,
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.020)
like this bunch of.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:12.860)
Yeah, everybody gets a chance
Lex Fridman (1:48:13.700)
to be the number one news story.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:14.940)
Everybody gets a chance to discuss it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:17.420)
So on a scale of one to 10, how much do you love Chamath?
Jason Calacanis (1:48:20.740)
Oh, it's 11.
Lex Fridman (1:48:21.740)
I mean, I love Chamath.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:23.220)
I mean, we played cards last night.
Lex Fridman (1:48:24.780)
We're besties.
Lex Fridman (1:48:25.620)
And you know, I would literally jump
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.900)
in front of a bullet for him.
Lex Fridman (1:48:29.620)
I mean, what's the lesson in that discussion?
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.180)
Because it was super, I wouldn't.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:32.940)
I think the love was felt and the respect was felt
Lex Fridman (1:48:35.300)
throughout even when you guys
Jason Calacanis (1:48:36.300)
are going pretty vicious on each other.
Lex Fridman (1:48:38.740)
Is there a lesson to be learned?
Lex Fridman (1:48:40.100)
Do you regret any of that conversation?
Lex Fridman (1:48:41.500)
No, I mean, I think he told me
Jason Calacanis (1:48:44.420)
that he regretted some of the things he said.
Lex Fridman (1:48:45.740)
He said publicly on the podcast,
Jason Calacanis (1:48:47.020)
like, listen, I was a little hot.
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.060)
I may have said things in the heat of the moment.
Lex Fridman (1:48:50.860)
But I don't live with too much regret
Lex Fridman (1:48:52.580)
because I always think about intent.
Jason Calacanis (1:48:54.220)
As one of the nuance and intent have been totally lost.
Lex Fridman (1:48:58.260)
The idea that we could have any kind of a nuanced discussion
Jason Calacanis (1:49:01.340)
about things seems to have been forgotten.
Lex Fridman (1:49:04.220)
And the fact that people don't look at people's intent.
Jason Calacanis (1:49:07.460)
If you hurt somebody's feelings or you disrespect somebody
Lex Fridman (1:49:11.180)
or you do something mean or whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:49:14.540)
I always look at the intent, you know?
Lex Fridman (1:49:16.940)
And I've had people attack me and I look at the intent
Lex Fridman (1:49:20.620)
and I'm like, that person feels bad about themselves.
Lex Fridman (1:49:23.260)
Or maybe I said something and I insulted them
Lex Fridman (1:49:25.780)
and that's why their blowback's there.
Lex Fridman (1:49:27.340)
So I always try to think what's the intent of the person.
Lex Fridman (1:49:29.300)
And then almost universally,
Lex Fridman (1:49:30.860)
you talk to somebody and you find out,
Jason Calacanis (1:49:33.660)
you ascribe some crazy intent that's not there.
Lex Fridman (1:49:37.220)
And they're like, oh yeah, you know what happened?
Jason Calacanis (1:49:38.540)
I got in a fight with my spouse
Lex Fridman (1:49:39.860)
and I didn't sleep last night
Lex Fridman (1:49:41.500)
and I've had a lot of anxiety about my business.
Lex Fridman (1:49:44.060)
And I just snapped and said something about you.
Lex Fridman (1:49:47.460)
And it's like, oh, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:49:48.540)
Like I literally had somebody on Twitter this past summer.
Jason Calacanis (1:49:52.500)
I had said something.
Lex Fridman (1:49:54.860)
I was complaining about a New York Times journalist
Lex Fridman (1:49:57.740)
and something I thought was wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:49:58.740)
And this person was a fan of that journalist.
Lex Fridman (1:50:00.820)
And they went, I kid you not, onto my social media account,
Lex Fridman (1:50:04.220)
found a picture I'd taken about how blue the sky was one day.
Jason Calacanis (1:50:08.740)
They reverse image search the tree line,
Lex Fridman (1:50:11.460)
found the tree line on Google image search somehow
Jason Calacanis (1:50:15.180)
with a reverse image search,
Lex Fridman (1:50:16.060)
found an old listing that some broker had listed
Jason Calacanis (1:50:20.460)
on their website of my house,
Lex Fridman (1:50:22.940)
and then posted my home address, the value of my home,
Lex Fridman (1:50:25.980)
and doxxed me on Twitter.
Lex Fridman (1:50:30.980)
And I'm like, what is going on here?
Lex Fridman (1:50:33.500)
So I call the person and I look them up
Lex Fridman (1:50:36.860)
and they work in private equity in Boston.
Lex Fridman (1:50:40.100)
And I look and I'm like, this person works in Boston.
Lex Fridman (1:50:42.620)
This is July 4th week.
Jason Calacanis (1:50:44.340)
So, and when I look at the person's LinkedIn,
Lex Fridman (1:50:47.300)
we have seven people in common.
Lex Fridman (1:50:49.340)
So going back to the AR conversation real quick,
Lex Fridman (1:50:51.380)
I'm like, okay, this person literally just doxxed me.
Jason Calacanis (1:50:53.700)
I asked them to take it down.
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.820)
They told me they won't take it down.
Lex Fridman (1:50:57.180)
And then I look at it.
Lex Fridman (1:50:58.220)
So then I DM him back on Instagram, on Twitter.
Lex Fridman (1:51:01.340)
And I said, by the way, your boss, Susan,
Lex Fridman (1:51:04.380)
and I know seven people in common.
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.940)
And these are the seven people.
Lex Fridman (1:51:08.100)
Here's a screenshot.
Lex Fridman (1:51:09.700)
What is she going to think when I call her on Monday
Lex Fridman (1:51:12.420)
and you've doxxed me?
Jason Calacanis (1:51:14.420)
Here's my phone number if you'd like to talk.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.740)
He calls me.
Lex Fridman (1:51:17.220)
I said, what's going on?
Lex Fridman (1:51:18.420)
Why would you do this?
Jason Calacanis (1:51:19.260)
He's like, well, I really pissed off
Lex Fridman (1:51:20.580)
about what you said about this person.
Jason Calacanis (1:51:21.700)
I was like, you understand I've had like two
Lex Fridman (1:51:23.540)
or three stalkers and anybody who's a high profile
Jason Calacanis (1:51:25.820)
like I am or medium profile,
Lex Fridman (1:51:27.820)
you're going to have weird things happen.
Jason Calacanis (1:51:29.300)
You literally put my home address.
Lex Fridman (1:51:30.460)
You put my family at risk.
Lex Fridman (1:51:32.220)
What if I put your home address on my,
Lex Fridman (1:51:34.620)
I have 400,000 followers or 300,000 followers.
Jason Calacanis (1:51:37.100)
You have like 300.
Lex Fridman (1:51:38.900)
What if I post your address?
Jason Calacanis (1:51:40.780)
He said, well, I wish you wouldn't do that.
Lex Fridman (1:51:42.140)
I was like, well, I asked you kindly
Jason Calacanis (1:51:43.060)
to take my address down.
Lex Fridman (1:51:44.660)
And I said, are you married?
Lex Fridman (1:51:47.700)
I said, how old are you?
Lex Fridman (1:51:48.860)
Are you like 25 or something?
Jason Calacanis (1:51:49.940)
He's like, no, I'm 42.
Lex Fridman (1:51:51.660)
I was like, you're 42 years old.
Lex Fridman (1:51:53.060)
I was like, are you married?
Lex Fridman (1:51:53.900)
Do you have kids?
Jason Calacanis (1:51:54.740)
He's like, yeah, I just had a baby like six months ago.
Lex Fridman (1:51:56.060)
I'm like, you're home with your wife.
Jason Calacanis (1:51:57.940)
It's July 4th weekend.
Lex Fridman (1:51:59.420)
You're doxxing Jason Calagans because you're upset at me
Jason Calacanis (1:52:02.940)
because I said something about a New York Times writer.
Lex Fridman (1:52:05.620)
He's like, yeah, this is the biggest mistake of my life.
Jason Calacanis (1:52:07.940)
I said, I tell you what, let's forget it ever happened.
Lex Fridman (1:52:11.980)
And he wrote me back and he said,
Jason Calacanis (1:52:13.700)
I just wanted to thank you for how you handled it.
Lex Fridman (1:52:16.620)
My wife said I'm a complete fucking moron.
Lex Fridman (1:52:19.060)
And he literally sent me an email.
Lex Fridman (1:52:22.380)
My wife says I'm a complete fucking moron.
Lex Fridman (1:52:24.060)
And I'm really sorry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (1:52:26.460)
And I wrote her back.
Jason Calacanis (1:52:27.300)
I said, I wrote her back and I said,
Lex Fridman (1:52:28.620)
my wife says the same thing to me all the time.
Jason Calacanis (1:52:30.420)
I said, welcome to the club.
Lex Fridman (1:52:31.780)
It's totally fine.
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.740)
But intent, nuance, it matters, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:36.380)
And the person could be having a bad day
Lex Fridman (1:52:37.820)
and they do something stupid they regret.
Lex Fridman (1:52:39.300)
And what am I gonna do, cancel the guy?
Jason Calacanis (1:52:41.260)
Or if I had called his boss,
Lex Fridman (1:52:43.460)
he would have been fired immediately.
Lex Fridman (1:52:45.220)
And then I got to live with this guy got fired
Lex Fridman (1:52:47.700)
and he's got a kid.
Lex Fridman (1:52:49.820)
And what is this personal destruction?
Lex Fridman (1:52:51.420)
Why are we doing this to each other?
Jason Calacanis (1:52:52.860)
Life's hard enough.
Lex Fridman (1:52:54.660)
Life's hard, right?
Jason Calacanis (1:52:55.900)
Like just getting through the day is hard.
Lex Fridman (1:52:57.620)
Yeah, and that little bit of empathy,
Jason Calacanis (1:53:00.380)
thinking about the intent of the person
Lex Fridman (1:53:02.580)
allows you to then sort of deescalate
Jason Calacanis (1:53:04.620)
this kind of conversation
Lex Fridman (1:53:05.740)
that social media wants to escalate.
Jason Calacanis (1:53:08.220)
Yes, back to what we were saying.
Lex Fridman (1:53:10.380)
If this, in my younger years,
Jason Calacanis (1:53:13.860)
I would have retweeted the guy's home address
Lex Fridman (1:53:16.060)
and my address and would have called his boss
Lex Fridman (1:53:17.940)
and tried to get him fired or whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:53:19.220)
And it's like, now I'm just like,
Lex Fridman (1:53:21.140)
why are we attacking each other?
Lex Fridman (1:53:23.540)
Life is so hard.
Jason Calacanis (1:53:24.500)
I mean, this is what the pandemic,
Lex Fridman (1:53:25.540)
I think we should make everybody realize is like,
Jason Calacanis (1:53:27.580)
look at how hard it is.
Lex Fridman (1:53:29.780)
Life is hard.
Lex Fridman (1:53:30.620)
And then just think about all the people suffering right now
Lex Fridman (1:53:32.540)
who are at home, the single mom or dad
Jason Calacanis (1:53:34.820)
with two or three kids at home in public school.
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.580)
Maybe they've been laid off
Lex Fridman (1:53:40.180)
and their kids aren't learning
Lex Fridman (1:53:41.820)
and they're in a tiny apartment.
Jason Calacanis (1:53:44.100)
I mean, this has been brutal for a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (1:53:46.700)
Not to mention people losing loved ones
Jason Calacanis (1:53:48.500)
or maybe some people got Corona
Lex Fridman (1:53:49.940)
and now their lungs are still not right.
Lex Fridman (1:53:52.220)
Can I ask you about love?
Lex Fridman (1:53:53.500)
Oh, sure.
Jason Calacanis (1:53:56.020)
I'm feeling it, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:53:57.100)
like we're an hour or two here, Lex.
Jason Calacanis (1:53:58.900)
Yeah, you're feeling it.
Lex Fridman (1:53:59.740)
Feeling like we could become besties.
Jason Calacanis (1:54:01.540)
We're getting it.
Lex Fridman (1:54:02.380)
I feel like we got a bromance going here, Lex.
Jason Calacanis (1:54:05.020)
I feel it too.
Lex Fridman (1:54:05.860)
I don't know if it's Eric Weinstein level,
Lex Fridman (1:54:07.260)
but I feel like it's close.
Lex Fridman (1:54:09.820)
Yeah, I'm feeling the love.
Lex Fridman (1:54:11.380)
But we talked about those music to my ears,
Lex Fridman (1:54:16.380)
your whole rant on the Olympic nature of a startup.
Jason Calacanis (1:54:23.500)
Is there a role,
Lex Fridman (1:54:25.180)
like what role does love, family, friendship
Jason Calacanis (1:54:29.020)
play in that brutal pursuit of excellence
Lex Fridman (1:54:34.100)
that is building a startup, building a company
Lex Fridman (1:54:37.020)
or creating anything new in this world?
Lex Fridman (1:54:40.500)
Such a great question and totally unprepared for it.
Jason Calacanis (1:54:44.340)
Because nobody would ever ask me about that.
Lex Fridman (1:54:46.860)
So I think it's why you've got quite a following
Jason Calacanis (1:54:49.420)
on your podcast is that you're able to ask these questions.
Lex Fridman (1:54:52.900)
And I can tell one story because, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:54:56.700)
I don't talk about,
Lex Fridman (1:54:57.660)
I try not to talk about relationship with Elon that often
Jason Calacanis (1:55:00.700)
because, you know, he's so famous now.
Lex Fridman (1:55:03.620)
I mean, when we met, I used to go out to parties with him
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.460)
and people were like, oh my God, you're Jason Calacas.
Lex Fridman (1:55:07.820)
I was like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:55:08.660)
And like, who's your friend?
Lex Fridman (1:55:09.500)
I'm like, that's my friend, Elon.
Lex Fridman (1:55:10.340)
And they'd be like, what, he's doing rocket ships?
Lex Fridman (1:55:11.900)
But he's told this story publicly.
Lex Fridman (1:55:13.580)
So I can tell it,
Lex Fridman (1:55:14.420)
and I would never talk about anything
Jason Calacanis (1:55:15.620)
that he hasn't already talked about publicly,
Lex Fridman (1:55:17.140)
especially since he's so high profile,
Lex Fridman (1:55:18.500)
but it was pretty funny moment.
Lex Fridman (1:55:21.940)
There was a moment in time
Jason Calacanis (1:55:23.060)
when Tesla almost went out of business
Lex Fridman (1:55:24.380)
and you've probably heard the story many times,
Lex Fridman (1:55:26.980)
but it was during the financial crisis
Lex Fridman (1:55:28.740)
and they were running out of money.
Lex Fridman (1:55:32.220)
And they said, you know, let's go get a steak.
Lex Fridman (1:55:36.780)
And we're in LA and we drove to BOA
Lex Fridman (1:55:38.420)
and I had my orange Tesla Roadster
Lex Fridman (1:55:40.340)
and he had his P1 or P2, like the red one
Jason Calacanis (1:55:43.700)
that I think is in space now.
Lex Fridman (1:55:45.820)
And we drove to the valet and we had a steak together
Lex Fridman (1:55:48.620)
and we're sitting there.
Lex Fridman (1:55:49.820)
And I said, you know, I read the story
Lex Fridman (1:55:51.420)
and Gawker or whatever, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:55:53.300)
and New York Times here,
Jason Calacanis (1:55:54.780)
you only got like five weeks of money left in Tesla.
Lex Fridman (1:55:58.420)
He goes, it's not true.
Jason Calacanis (1:55:59.260)
I was like, oh, thank God.
Lex Fridman (1:56:01.020)
He goes, we have two weeks.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:02.100)
I was like, oh God.
Lex Fridman (1:56:04.820)
I was like, well, what's going on
Lex Fridman (1:56:06.460)
with the rocket ship company?
Lex Fridman (1:56:07.780)
You know, like, you know, I know you did the one last month
Lex Fridman (1:56:12.100)
and don't you have one coming up?
Lex Fridman (1:56:13.340)
He's like, yeah, we've got the third one coming up.
Lex Fridman (1:56:14.820)
I was like, well, how's that going?
Lex Fridman (1:56:16.380)
I said, well, we blow that one up.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:17.940)
There's no more SpaceX.
Lex Fridman (1:56:19.620)
I was like, so two weeks of money left in Tesla
Lex Fridman (1:56:22.340)
and SpaceX, you blew up the first two rockets,
Lex Fridman (1:56:24.260)
you blow up the third SpaceX, it's over.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:25.700)
He's like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:56:26.620)
I was like, I can loan you a couple million dollars.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:29.460)
I don't have like a ton.
Lex Fridman (1:56:31.580)
He's like, it's okay.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:32.420)
Our friend, beep, has loaned me some money.
Lex Fridman (1:56:35.740)
And Elon's been super public about this.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:37.740)
I would never tell the story unless he hadn't been,
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.380)
but he was talking, he never said who it was,
Lex Fridman (1:56:42.300)
but somebody had loaned him money to keep him afloat.
Lex Fridman (1:56:45.100)
He was functionally bankrupt.
Jason Calacanis (1:56:47.180)
I mean, he had the equity in the companies,
Lex Fridman (1:56:48.620)
but the equity was quickly becoming worth zero
Lex Fridman (1:56:50.460)
and the financial crisis.
Lex Fridman (1:56:51.460)
And he's figuring out if he's going to go on vacation
Jason Calacanis (1:56:54.500)
for Christmas or not.
Lex Fridman (1:56:55.540)
And he's on the phone trying to, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:56:58.940)
save both companies.
Lex Fridman (1:57:01.420)
And I said, certainly there must be some good news.
Lex Fridman (1:57:04.100)
And he takes out his Blackberry to date this conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:57:07.220)
I don't know iPhones.
Jason Calacanis (1:57:08.260)
Takes out his Blackberry and he starts swiping.
Lex Fridman (1:57:10.780)
And he says, don't tell anybody.
Jason Calacanis (1:57:12.860)
This is what I'm building.
Lex Fridman (1:57:14.060)
And he shows me the Model S.
Lex Fridman (1:57:17.580)
And nobody knew that he was working on the Model S.
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.860)
We knew he was doing the roadster
Lex Fridman (1:57:22.100)
and he was trying to save the company.
Lex Fridman (1:57:24.220)
And I looked at it and I was like, that's gorgeous.
Jason Calacanis (1:57:27.820)
It was the clay models.
Lex Fridman (1:57:29.260)
So it was a full size clay model.
Lex Fridman (1:57:30.740)
So there's human beings standing around a clay version
Lex Fridman (1:57:33.100)
of this tiny little Blackberry picture.
Jason Calacanis (1:57:34.380)
I'm scrolling through on the,
Lex Fridman (1:57:35.900)
remember that little pad or the ball on the Blackberry.
Jason Calacanis (1:57:38.620)
I'm scrolling through it.
Lex Fridman (1:57:39.460)
I'm like, this is fucking great.
Lex Fridman (1:57:41.460)
And I just said to him, it's like,
Lex Fridman (1:57:43.980)
what's the range going to be?
Jason Calacanis (1:57:44.820)
He says, well, I think we get 250 miles.
Lex Fridman (1:57:46.500)
I was like, 250 miles?
Jason Calacanis (1:57:48.020)
He's like, yeah, I think it'd be the safest car ever.
Lex Fridman (1:57:49.860)
I said, what is it going to cost?
Jason Calacanis (1:57:51.220)
He says, I think this could cost eventually 50, $60,000.
Lex Fridman (1:57:55.820)
I said, Elon, if you make that car,
Jason Calacanis (1:57:57.660)
you'll change the goddamn world.
Lex Fridman (1:58:00.220)
You have to, this company must survive
Jason Calacanis (1:58:03.140)
because the roadsters for like 2000 people in United States,
Lex Fridman (1:58:07.860)
this car is for every person in the United States.
Jason Calacanis (1:58:11.020)
Every single person in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.860)
will want this car if it's $50,000.
Lex Fridman (1:58:15.100)
And maybe some of the people who have 20 or 30,000 dollars
Lex Fridman (1:58:18.260)
won't be able to afford it, but they'll all want it.
Jason Calacanis (1:58:20.660)
It's gorgeous.
Lex Fridman (1:58:21.900)
And he said, you really think so?
Jason Calacanis (1:58:22.740)
I said, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:58:23.980)
So I got home and I talked to my wife, Jade,
Lex Fridman (1:58:26.020)
and I said, do you have the checkbook?
Lex Fridman (1:58:27.700)
She does all the finances and stuff like that,
Jason Calacanis (1:58:29.260)
pays the bills and whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:58:30.660)
And I said, don't tell anybody,
Jason Calacanis (1:58:33.700)
Elon's making this great car.
Lex Fridman (1:58:35.140)
And I wrote two checks for $50,000.
Lex Fridman (1:58:38.020)
And I just took out this paper and I wrote,
Lex Fridman (1:58:40.020)
E, comma, love the new car, I'll take two.
Lex Fridman (1:58:47.060)
And I signed it.
Lex Fridman (1:58:48.260)
I kissed the two $50,000 checks, put them in the envelope,
Lex Fridman (1:58:51.140)
and I FedExed it to him for Monday delivery.
Lex Fridman (1:58:53.940)
And I said to Jade, that $100,000 is going to be gone
Jason Calacanis (1:58:58.780)
in 48 hours because it will pay for one or two days
Lex Fridman (1:59:00.660)
of payroll on Tesla.
Lex Fridman (1:59:02.100)
So we just added like, instead of two weeks of runway,
Lex Fridman (1:59:04.140)
he's got 12 days.
Lex Fridman (1:59:06.700)
And the checks don't cash, but then I read a story
Lex Fridman (1:59:10.660)
that he's closed the money, saved the company
Jason Calacanis (1:59:12.620)
in like the next week or two.
Lex Fridman (1:59:14.620)
And a couple of months later, the checks get cashed.
Lex Fridman (1:59:19.180)
And I'm like, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:59:20.860)
Three years later, I get an email,
Jason Calacanis (1:59:22.780)
your reservation number, it's from Tesla,
Lex Fridman (1:59:25.060)
your reservation number is 0000001.
Lex Fridman (1:59:29.620)
And then five seconds later,
Lex Fridman (1:59:31.540)
your reservation number is 000073.
Lex Fridman (1:59:35.060)
And I forwarded the number one to Elon,
Lex Fridman (1:59:36.660)
I said, you know, I can't take number one,
Jason Calacanis (1:59:40.580)
a signature number one, I can't take that, that's yours.
Lex Fridman (1:59:43.780)
And he's like, oh, I got five of them.
Lex Fridman (1:59:45.260)
And besides, you're the first person who ordered it.
Lex Fridman (1:59:48.220)
And I was the first person who had seen it.
Jason Calacanis (1:59:49.540)
You're gonna get me to be teary eyed.
Lex Fridman (1:59:51.020)
I mean, that's beautiful.
Jason Calacanis (1:59:51.860)
No, it was a very...
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.700)
That's a beautiful moment.
Jason Calacanis (1:59:53.540)
It was an incredible moment for both of us.
Lex Fridman (1:59:55.100)
And we talk about it sometimes, you know,
Jason Calacanis (1:59:57.140)
those moments in time.
Lex Fridman (1:59:58.180)
And to your point about love, Elon...
Jason Calacanis (1:59:59.580)
That's like the darkest moment,
Lex Fridman (20:00.240)
even more perniciously that other people can.
Lex Fridman (20:02.960)
And that's the group of people that I think are highly vocal
Lex Fridman (20:06.440)
but a small group of people,
Jason Calacanis (20:07.840)
which are generally people of incredible privilege,
Lex Fridman (20:11.600)
rich parents, white city dwellers, liberals.
Jason Calacanis (20:15.360)
They kind of look and say,
Lex Fridman (20:16.520)
poor people cannot change it a lot.
Lex Fridman (20:18.880)
And they're battling in their minds
Lex Fridman (20:21.680)
to protect poor people.
Lex Fridman (20:23.320)
But they have this very weird
Lex Fridman (20:24.480)
patriarchal kind of approach to it,
Jason Calacanis (20:26.160)
which is they think that they're not capable
Lex Fridman (20:28.320)
of changing their lot in life.
Lex Fridman (20:29.720)
And they're like, it's not possible.
Lex Fridman (20:31.480)
And then once in a while, I'll tweet something where I say,
Jason Calacanis (20:34.280)
it's really incredible that every piece of knowledge
Lex Fridman (20:36.680)
you could possibly want is now available for free on YouTube.
Lex Fridman (20:40.840)
And every course from MIT and Harvard and Stanford
Lex Fridman (20:43.880)
is available on edX or Coursera.
Lex Fridman (20:46.200)
And all that information is there freely available.
Lex Fridman (20:49.240)
And you can take the lectures.
Jason Calacanis (20:50.960)
This is amazing.
Lex Fridman (20:51.800)
And then people will be like,
Jason Calacanis (20:52.800)
yeah, but people don't have access to it.
Lex Fridman (20:54.360)
I'm like, they do.
Jason Calacanis (20:55.840)
It's free.
Lex Fridman (20:56.680)
Here's the link.
Lex Fridman (20:57.520)
And they're like, yeah, but they don't have internet.
Lex Fridman (20:59.400)
And I'm like, here's the chart
Jason Calacanis (21:01.360)
of internet penetration in America.
Lex Fridman (21:03.560)
And they're like, well, poor people don't have internet.
Lex Fridman (21:05.080)
And I'm like, really?
Lex Fridman (21:07.400)
Find me any downtrodden person without a smartphone
Jason Calacanis (21:11.200)
with a high speed connection
Lex Fridman (21:12.400)
that capitalism provided for $12 a month or $15 a month.
Jason Calacanis (21:16.400)
It's very hard to find that.
Lex Fridman (21:18.240)
And we have it so well in this country
Lex Fridman (21:20.960)
and there's so much opportunity,
Lex Fridman (21:23.720)
but people don't believe it.
Lex Fridman (21:25.720)
And that's actually one of the problems.
Lex Fridman (21:27.200)
See, the average American still watches
Jason Calacanis (21:28.440)
four or five hours of television a day.
Lex Fridman (21:30.560)
And often I meet people and they're like,
Jason Calacanis (21:32.000)
I need a technical co founder.
Lex Fridman (21:35.160)
But all I need is a million dollars.
Lex Fridman (21:36.600)
And I'm like, okay, well, what is your skill?
Lex Fridman (21:37.840)
And they don't have a skill.
Lex Fridman (21:39.280)
And I'm like, well, are you a designer?
Lex Fridman (21:41.600)
No.
Lex Fridman (21:42.440)
Are you a product manager?
Lex Fridman (21:43.260)
No.
Lex Fridman (21:44.100)
Are you a developer?
Lex Fridman (21:44.940)
No.
Lex Fridman (21:45.760)
Are you a sales executive?
Lex Fridman (21:46.600)
No.
Lex Fridman (21:47.440)
Do you have an idea?
Lex Fridman (21:48.280)
Well, as my friend, Sam Harris,
Jason Calacanis (21:50.080)
I think your friend as well says like,
Lex Fridman (21:53.060)
everybody has like a million ideas an hour.
Jason Calacanis (21:55.320)
Like you don't really get credit for those.
Lex Fridman (21:57.160)
Even when you're asleep, your idea is spewing ideas.
Jason Calacanis (21:59.760)
Like zero credit for your ideas.
Lex Fridman (22:01.640)
It's all about execution.
Lex Fridman (22:03.240)
And we're seeing.
Lex Fridman (22:04.080)
You have to believe that you yourself
Jason Calacanis (22:04.920)
can be the core of that execution.
Lex Fridman (22:06.840)
You yourself can build the thing in every,
Jason Calacanis (22:08.960)
no matter what your circumstances are.
Lex Fridman (22:10.960)
I mean, we could talk about like structural racism
Lex Fridman (22:13.200)
and all those kinds of things that push things down.
Lex Fridman (22:15.320)
But from the individual perspective,
Jason Calacanis (22:17.320)
when you just like are coaching
Lex Fridman (22:18.680)
or giving advice to an individual,
Jason Calacanis (22:20.800)
you can literally change the world.
Lex Fridman (22:22.080)
I mean, Wall Street Bets is an indication of that
Jason Calacanis (22:24.160)
in the financial space that you yourself can have,
Lex Fridman (22:27.000)
can change the world.
Jason Calacanis (22:28.120)
That's why this country is amazing.
Lex Fridman (22:30.240)
Still the best country in the world, right?
Jason Calacanis (22:31.600)
I mean, it still is amazing the opportunity
Lex Fridman (22:33.960)
provided to people.
Jason Calacanis (22:35.360)
All this educational experience is online.
Lex Fridman (22:37.440)
And the ability, what I tell young people
Jason Calacanis (22:39.720)
who are looking for advice, I say,
Lex Fridman (22:42.080)
the skill you need to refine
Jason Calacanis (22:43.880)
is the ability to learn new skills.
Lex Fridman (22:45.960)
Like if you become good at learning a new skill,
Lex Fridman (22:49.160)
and Tim Ferriss, a friend of mine has really pioneered this,
Lex Fridman (22:52.680)
he can get to 60 or 70% of like the knowledge
Jason Calacanis (22:57.680)
in a skill in some incredibly short period of time.
Lex Fridman (23:00.320)
And I'm not saying he's gonna become a virtuoso drummer
Jason Calacanis (23:02.760)
or a great basketball player,
Lex Fridman (23:03.800)
but Tim and I were on vacation together
Jason Calacanis (23:06.280)
in like a group vacation in Italy
Lex Fridman (23:07.760)
and there was a basketball court.
Lex Fridman (23:09.520)
And I said, let's go shoot some hoops.
Lex Fridman (23:11.720)
I'd never shot before.
Lex Fridman (23:13.040)
And I was like, okay, come on, I'll teach you.
Lex Fridman (23:15.120)
And Tim is fabulously uncoordinated.
Jason Calacanis (23:17.640)
People don't know this.
Lex Fridman (23:18.880)
Like he tried to dribble a basketball and do a layup
Lex Fridman (23:24.160)
and it looked like he had a blindfold on.
Lex Fridman (23:26.600)
I mean, you've never seen something less elegant
Jason Calacanis (23:29.800)
than Tim Ferriss doing a layup in basketball.
Lex Fridman (23:32.000)
And then he watched me do it three or four times
Lex Fridman (23:34.680)
and I watched him study me.
Lex Fridman (23:37.160)
And listen, I've been playing basketball in Brooklyn
Jason Calacanis (23:39.280)
since I was a kid.
Lex Fridman (23:40.400)
I got a couple of moves and he was just taking notes
Lex Fridman (23:43.120)
and taking notes and taking notes.
Lex Fridman (23:44.400)
And by the end of a couple of hours of doing this,
Jason Calacanis (23:46.960)
I could just watch him checking his form
Lex Fridman (23:48.800)
and figuring it out.
Jason Calacanis (23:50.520)
That's every skill in the world now.
Lex Fridman (23:52.800)
And what I tell people is like, I'm like,
Lex Fridman (23:55.440)
did you watch Game of Thrones?
Lex Fridman (23:56.520)
And they're like, yeah.
Lex Fridman (23:57.880)
Watch Breaking Bad?
Lex Fridman (23:58.720)
Like, yeah, I'm like, okay, that's about 400 hours.
Lex Fridman (24:02.840)
How about you don't watch the next two
Lex Fridman (24:05.160)
and you put that 400 hours into learning
Lex Fridman (24:06.720)
how to be a graphic designer, a UX person,
Lex Fridman (24:09.640)
a developer, whatever it is and learn how to add skills.
Jason Calacanis (24:13.800)
That's what I did my whole life.
Lex Fridman (24:14.760)
I was a kid from Brooklyn, went to school at night,
Lex Fridman (24:17.120)
but I was very quick to get to maybe 50%
Lex Fridman (24:20.200)
of the knowledge base of graphic design
Jason Calacanis (24:22.080)
or being a writer or being a sales executive,
Lex Fridman (24:24.360)
whatever it was, a developer even.
Lex Fridman (24:26.520)
And I was just good enough to not have people
Lex Fridman (24:29.080)
be able to bullshit me like when I hired them.
Lex Fridman (24:31.440)
And that was a big unlock.
Lex Fridman (24:33.520)
When you know enough that people can't snow you,
Jason Calacanis (24:35.840)
that's a really good one.
Lex Fridman (24:36.840)
And look at yourself.
Jason Calacanis (24:38.520)
You figured out how to set up an entire podcast,
Lex Fridman (24:40.560)
people don't know this,
Lex Fridman (24:41.400)
but you don't have a team around you.
Lex Fridman (24:43.240)
I have a team of like five, six people working on my podcast.
Jason Calacanis (24:45.360)
With even knowing enough about to set this up,
Lex Fridman (24:48.120)
you would then be able to hire a team.
Jason Calacanis (24:50.000)
Correct.
Lex Fridman (24:50.840)
And you'll be able to call them on their bullshit
Jason Calacanis (24:52.040)
if they're not doing a good job.
Lex Fridman (24:53.720)
And that's really important.
Lex Fridman (24:54.560)
And I don't know that much about this whole thing,
Lex Fridman (24:56.240)
but I know enough to be able to then see
Jason Calacanis (24:58.280)
who knows their stuff and not.
Lex Fridman (24:59.960)
You're absolutely right.
Lex Fridman (25:00.800)
And the process of learning how to learn
Lex Fridman (25:03.640)
is essential there because I did martial arts,
Jason Calacanis (25:08.720)
jiu jitsu and so on.
Lex Fridman (25:09.880)
And it's so funny to watch.
Jason Calacanis (25:11.400)
I did Taekwondo, yeah.
Lex Fridman (25:12.240)
Taekwondo is awesome.
Jason Calacanis (25:13.560)
It's funny that there's some people
Lex Fridman (25:15.040)
that do an activity for years,
Jason Calacanis (25:17.520)
because just sort of elaborate on something
Lex Fridman (25:19.920)
you were saying about hours.
Jason Calacanis (25:21.840)
It's not always the amount of hours,
Lex Fridman (25:24.960)
it's the quality that you put in.
Jason Calacanis (25:26.680)
Deliberate practice versus just doing some behavior.
Lex Fridman (25:29.680)
I mean, literally I've been playing chess
Lex Fridman (25:31.480)
and trying to get that going again
Lex Fridman (25:33.040)
after watching Queen's Gambit and I got chess.com.
Lex Fridman (25:35.520)
And I realized I was just playing
Lex Fridman (25:36.680)
and I'm not getting better.
Lex Fridman (25:37.520)
And then I was like, oh wait,
Lex Fridman (25:38.360)
there's a little analysis feature here in chess.com
Jason Calacanis (25:40.640)
where it will show you your blunders and mistakes.
Lex Fridman (25:43.160)
And I'm like, oh, I'm spending no time
Jason Calacanis (25:45.440)
reviewing my losses in chess
Lex Fridman (25:47.640)
and I just wanna play the next game.
Jason Calacanis (25:49.120)
I should really review these losses
Lex Fridman (25:50.880)
and figure out what mistakes I made.
Lex Fridman (25:52.080)
And when I started doing that,
Lex Fridman (25:52.920)
I was like, oh, I'm getting better.
Lex Fridman (25:54.920)
So some deliberate practice really works.
Lex Fridman (25:56.400)
And if you wanna take it all the way,
Jason Calacanis (25:58.160)
Magnus Carlsen, shout out to the guy,
Lex Fridman (26:00.440)
he has an app, but there's a few other coaching apps
Jason Calacanis (26:03.200)
where you focus on the end game,
Lex Fridman (26:04.880)
you focus drilling a particular,
Jason Calacanis (26:07.320)
you basically don't play the game at all.
Lex Fridman (26:09.120)
You just focus on drilling the different aspects.
Jason Calacanis (26:11.960)
The openings, the end game, the end game, yeah.
Lex Fridman (26:14.000)
And there's different kinds of puzzles.
Lex Fridman (26:15.320)
So you can really make it into a deliberate practice.
Lex Fridman (26:18.080)
Not to make this episode sponsored by chess.com,
Lex Fridman (26:20.720)
but they literally have puzzles.
Lex Fridman (26:22.200)
So I was like, oh, and it's $100 a year for this product.
Lex Fridman (26:25.040)
And I just thought to myself, this is capitalism.
Lex Fridman (26:28.520)
They don't need to charge you $100 an hour for a lesson.
Jason Calacanis (26:32.640)
They can charge you $100
Lex Fridman (26:34.120)
and they've created the ability for you to play chess
Jason Calacanis (26:36.280)
24 hours a day against opponents
Lex Fridman (26:38.320)
who are perfectly matched against you based on your rating.
Lex Fridman (26:41.520)
And they analyze every game and they have puzzles
Lex Fridman (26:44.120)
and they have tutorials and they've got everything else.
Jason Calacanis (26:46.320)
It's like, just think about how much value
Lex Fridman (26:50.320)
is being provided to society because of capitalism
Lex Fridman (26:53.440)
and because competition.
Lex Fridman (26:54.480)
If you want things to get better
Lex Fridman (26:56.320)
and you wanna step up your game,
Lex Fridman (26:58.120)
just make it slightly competitive.
Jason Calacanis (26:59.680)
It is one of these things in human existence
Lex Fridman (27:03.480)
that is so powerful.
Jason Calacanis (27:05.040)
I don't know, did you see the Michael Jordan documentary,
Lex Fridman (27:07.120)
The Last Dance?
Jason Calacanis (27:08.080)
Like half of it, I'm still working through it.
Lex Fridman (27:10.480)
He's so competitive and petty.
Jason Calacanis (27:14.320)
It's so inspiring that all he cares about is just winning
Lex Fridman (27:19.000)
to the level of which he literally,
Jason Calacanis (27:21.160)
there's like this running meme, I took that personally
Lex Fridman (27:23.960)
and I took that person.
Jason Calacanis (27:24.840)
I don't know if you've seen the images of him
Lex Fridman (27:26.480)
sitting smoking a cigar,
Jason Calacanis (27:27.600)
looking at like an iPad or a video clip
Lex Fridman (27:29.400)
and it's like, I took that personally.
Lex Fridman (27:30.960)
And you can make a super cut
Lex Fridman (27:32.040)
of every time he took something personally,
Jason Calacanis (27:33.720)
he literally takes everything personally
Lex Fridman (27:35.400)
to give himself that competitive motivation to win.
Jason Calacanis (27:38.320)
That's capitalism.
Lex Fridman (27:39.920)
And when people are competing,
Jason Calacanis (27:42.080)
man, look at what Elon did to the space of cars.
Lex Fridman (27:46.600)
Like every, they were literally laughing at him
Jason Calacanis (27:49.360)
in the first 10 years.
Lex Fridman (27:50.720)
Electric cars, ha ha, that company will go out of business.
Lex Fridman (27:53.360)
And now every single company is like,
Lex Fridman (27:55.600)
we're going fully electric by 2035.
Lex Fridman (27:58.400)
And he kicked their asses so brutally
Lex Fridman (28:02.240)
that they had no choice but then to step up their game.
Lex Fridman (28:05.760)
And that's what we want, right?
Lex Fridman (28:07.280)
And this virus and this pandemic,
Jason Calacanis (28:09.320)
I think the great thing that will come out
Lex Fridman (28:12.880)
of this horrible experience that we've all had
Jason Calacanis (28:15.120)
is psychologically death, learning,
Lex Fridman (28:17.640)
just so many bad things occurred,
Jason Calacanis (28:19.080)
the economy, people losing their jobs.
Lex Fridman (28:21.080)
But we also got to see the human spirit
Jason Calacanis (28:22.800)
with these mRNA vaccines and just how,
Lex Fridman (28:27.200)
if we took out some of the regulation
Lex Fridman (28:29.400)
and people were super motivated,
Lex Fridman (28:31.280)
we might actually be able to eliminate
Jason Calacanis (28:33.880)
all pandemics from ever happening again.
Lex Fridman (28:38.520)
And before that, Bill Gates was banging his fist
Lex Fridman (28:40.840)
and Jeff Skoll was doing the movie Contagion.
Lex Fridman (28:43.720)
I mean, for two decades, people have been banging their fist.
Jason Calacanis (28:45.960)
We have to be prepared for this.
Lex Fridman (28:47.640)
And everybody's like, yeah, whatever, YOLO.
Jason Calacanis (28:49.680)
It's not gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (28:50.800)
And now it's happened and people are like,
Jason Calacanis (28:53.040)
we need to be able to destroy every pandemic and virus
Lex Fridman (28:57.600)
before it happens.
Lex Fridman (28:58.440)
And listen, you know a lot more about science than I do,
Lex Fridman (29:01.640)
but these mRNA has been around for a while.
Jason Calacanis (29:04.400)
We've just never gotten aggressive about doing it.
Lex Fridman (29:06.920)
And then you think about challenge trials.
Jason Calacanis (29:09.120)
I don't know if you've been following this,
Lex Fridman (29:10.240)
but they're doing challenge trials now in the UK this month
Jason Calacanis (29:13.640)
where they're introducing COVID into healthy young patients
Lex Fridman (29:17.480)
and then giving them the vaccine or, you know.
Lex Fridman (29:19.920)
And that is against all rules and regulations
Lex Fridman (29:24.440)
about do no harm.
Lex Fridman (29:27.280)
But then you think about it.
Lex Fridman (29:29.040)
We kind of celebrate people jumping out of planes
Lex Fridman (29:31.480)
and we got that one guy, Alex Honnold,
Lex Fridman (29:33.560)
who's climbing up mountains without a rope
Lex Fridman (29:35.320)
and they give him a North Star, you know,
Lex Fridman (29:37.200)
back page ad and an endorsement deal.
Lex Fridman (29:41.680)
And we celebrate that.
Lex Fridman (29:42.840)
We celebrate people surfing with sharks.
Jason Calacanis (29:45.040)
We celebrate people doing deep welding.
Lex Fridman (29:47.560)
We pay them extra to go 200 feet underground
Lex Fridman (29:50.440)
and weld stuff.
Lex Fridman (29:51.720)
And people do dangerous stuff all day long, astronauts.
Lex Fridman (29:57.360)
But we won't, soldiers, firefighters,
Lex Fridman (2:00:01.260)
one of the darkest moments in his life probably.
Jason Calacanis (2:00:03.660)
I think it was, I can tell you,
Lex Fridman (2:00:04.900)
it was the darkest period of his life for sure.
Lex Fridman (2:00:07.180)
And he's been very public about how dark that was.
Lex Fridman (2:00:09.820)
And I think, you know, this is why I have great sympathy
Jason Calacanis (2:00:12.540)
for the entrepreneurs of the world,
Lex Fridman (2:00:13.900)
like the suffering and the pain.
Lex Fridman (2:00:15.500)
And when he talks about the suffering and the pain
Lex Fridman (2:00:17.540)
that all of these founders have felt,
Lex Fridman (2:00:18.820)
and then we were throwing rocks at them
Lex Fridman (2:00:20.420)
or criticizing them as they try to change the world
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.540)
and save humanity, and in Tesla's case,
Lex Fridman (2:00:24.580)
I mean, they weren't, you know,
Jason Calacanis (2:00:26.580)
they weren't like delivering pizza.
Lex Fridman (2:00:28.540)
I mean, they were trying to get us off of fossil fuels.
Jason Calacanis (2:00:31.420)
Like this was a big, heady mission
Lex Fridman (2:00:33.180)
to literally save the environment, the planet, humanity.
Lex Fridman (2:00:36.820)
And the way they shorted that stock and they attacked him,
Lex Fridman (2:00:40.220)
it was always perplexing to me why any human being
Jason Calacanis (2:00:44.460)
who is standing on God's green earth
Lex Fridman (2:00:47.380)
would want to throw rocks at the guy
Jason Calacanis (2:00:50.220)
who is trying to stem the dam of global warming
Lex Fridman (2:00:53.940)
that is about to engulf all of us.
Lex Fridman (2:00:56.660)
How dare they throw rocks at that guy?
Lex Fridman (2:01:00.100)
There's so many people you could throw rocks at.
Jason Calacanis (2:01:02.140)
There's somebody who's making the Juul vaporizer,
Lex Fridman (2:01:05.180)
throw rocks at that scumbag, no offense.
Lex Fridman (2:01:07.900)
But like whoever's making the Juul things
Lex Fridman (2:01:09.780)
and is, you know, selling pina colada flavor
Jason Calacanis (2:01:12.300)
to 12 year olds, like throw rocks at them.
Lex Fridman (2:01:16.060)
Somebody is doing something, you know, abhorrent,
Lex Fridman (2:01:18.100)
but not E, I mean, and yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.540)
Anyway, that car is, you know, up the road here,
Jason Calacanis (2:01:25.380)
sitting under a cover with 20,000 miles on it in my garage.
Lex Fridman (2:01:29.740)
And then the Roadster number 16 is in the garage next to it.
Lex Fridman (2:01:32.660)
And every day I walk by the two of them
Lex Fridman (2:01:34.500)
and I get a warm feeling in my heart
Jason Calacanis (2:01:35.940)
because I know he did it.
Lex Fridman (2:01:37.900)
Against all odds, against all odds, he pulled it off.
Lex Fridman (2:01:43.100)
And it was that moment, that month in that 2000,
Lex Fridman (2:01:47.620)
I think it was probably December, January,
Jason Calacanis (2:01:49.540)
December of 2008, I think.
Lex Fridman (2:01:51.980)
You know, it's just 12 years ago
Jason Calacanis (2:01:52.980)
when you think about 13 years ago, it was dark.
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.380)
I mean, it was dark.
Lex Fridman (2:01:56.340)
And they almost had the same thing happen,
Lex Fridman (2:01:58.740)
you know, in the Model 3 production
Jason Calacanis (2:02:00.100)
in June of two years, three years ago.
Lex Fridman (2:02:02.340)
And I remember him just trying to get the Model 3
Jason Calacanis (2:02:05.340)
out the door and the company almost crashed then.
Lex Fridman (2:02:07.700)
Most of these companies have, you know,
Jason Calacanis (2:02:09.020)
these kinds of moments.
Lex Fridman (2:02:10.580)
And I think friendship is you get what you give,
Jason Calacanis (2:02:14.860)
you get what you give.
Lex Fridman (2:02:16.620)
And if you are there for people,
Jason Calacanis (2:02:18.900)
you're gonna feel so good about having done that.
Lex Fridman (2:02:22.300)
And then the reciprocation effect,
Jason Calacanis (2:02:27.540)
which you'd probably know very well,
Lex Fridman (2:02:29.420)
is so great in the world that anytime you're kind to people,
Jason Calacanis (2:02:33.260)
you build this incredible bond.
Lex Fridman (2:02:34.540)
And then what are we at the end of the day, Lex,
Lex Fridman (2:02:37.100)
besides a series of memories with the people we love?
Lex Fridman (2:02:41.260)
That's all it is.
Jason Calacanis (2:02:42.300)
It's just a series of memories and moments.
Lex Fridman (2:02:45.620)
It's just moments.
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.460)
You ever see Blade Runner?
Lex Fridman (2:02:48.780)
Yes, of course.
Lex Fridman (2:02:49.700)
Do you remember what Rucker Harris says at the end,
Lex Fridman (2:02:52.140)
all of these memories gone, like tears in the rain?
Jason Calacanis (2:02:55.060)
I mean, that's our existence.
Lex Fridman (2:02:56.940)
It just all goes away at some point.
Jason Calacanis (2:02:59.420)
It's just these drops of rain.
Lex Fridman (2:03:01.100)
Each of those memories,
Jason Calacanis (2:03:02.420)
just like one snowflake or one drop of rain,
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.300)
and they're all lost at some point, but they're here now.
Lex Fridman (2:03:08.340)
And that's why we have to be there for each other.
Lex Fridman (2:03:10.500)
That's why I feel like what I do
Jason Calacanis (2:03:12.740)
is so important in this world.
Lex Fridman (2:03:14.820)
And I get such great meaning out of it.
Jason Calacanis (2:03:16.300)
Just being a friend, just having these conversations.
Lex Fridman (2:03:19.020)
What you're doing on your podcast,
Jason Calacanis (2:03:21.340)
just talking to intelligent people
Lex Fridman (2:03:23.340)
and spreading the word and the gospel
Jason Calacanis (2:03:26.380)
of what they're saying and amplifying it,
Lex Fridman (2:03:28.620)
you're inspiring so many people.
Jason Calacanis (2:03:29.940)
Every podcast, you get 500,000 people,
Lex Fridman (2:03:31.780)
a million people watch these videos.
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.740)
And there's some kid in Sri Lanka
Lex Fridman (2:03:35.740)
or some little girl in Afghanistan
Jason Calacanis (2:03:37.380)
who's gonna stumble upon this on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (2:03:39.860)
and they're gonna change the world in the next century.
Jason Calacanis (2:03:42.860)
Because it's not just about America.
Lex Fridman (2:03:46.180)
Our story's almost over, right?
Jason Calacanis (2:03:48.300)
We were the story of the last two or 300 years.
Lex Fridman (2:03:50.060)
I hope it keeps going.
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.140)
But there's all these other places in the world,
Lex Fridman (2:03:52.700)
Sao Paulo and Africa,
Jason Calacanis (2:03:54.980)
where people now have access to these videos.
Lex Fridman (2:03:59.260)
And somebody will hear this video and go,
Jason Calacanis (2:04:00.820)
Elon did it.
Lex Fridman (2:04:02.060)
Oh, and that guy Jason was his friend.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:03.420)
And, oh, and Lex does those interviews with him.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.580)
Oh yeah, I could do it too.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:07.900)
Your little magical moment of love
Lex Fridman (2:04:10.180)
amidst the suffering with Elon
Jason Calacanis (2:04:12.380)
because you've talked about it,
Lex Fridman (2:04:14.260)
it'll have these ripple effects.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:15.620)
It's fascinating to think about in decades to come.
Lex Fridman (2:04:18.420)
And new entrepreneurs being born,
Jason Calacanis (2:04:20.540)
new, more love being put out there,
Lex Fridman (2:04:23.380)
and more support through these rough times
Jason Calacanis (2:04:26.580)
when people are trying to create new things.
Lex Fridman (2:04:29.460)
I mean, that's a beautiful thing, that's a beautiful,
Jason Calacanis (2:04:31.980)
I'm glad you think of friendship in this way.
Lex Fridman (2:04:35.420)
I'm deeply grateful that you're loyal.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:39.420)
Every time you invest.
Lex Fridman (2:04:40.260)
In the way you are.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:41.700)
Here's the thing,
Lex Fridman (2:04:42.900)
it costs you nothing to make this investment either.
Jason Calacanis (2:04:45.700)
The amount of time it takes to be bitter or angry,
Lex Fridman (2:04:49.940)
sitting at home, to be disappointed,
Jason Calacanis (2:04:53.580)
you could just channel that same amount of energy
Lex Fridman (2:04:55.740)
into being loyal, loving, kind, and there for people.
Lex Fridman (2:04:59.660)
It just only takes the intention, right?
Lex Fridman (2:05:02.260)
The water is gonna, those emotions are gonna flow, right?
Jason Calacanis (2:05:05.060)
Like Sam would always tell me
Lex Fridman (2:05:06.060)
when I was struggling in my life and I talked to him,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:09.460)
he'd say, you know, Jason,
Lex Fridman (2:05:10.300)
your brain is spewing all these ideas.
Jason Calacanis (2:05:12.660)
Imagine you're standing, sitting by a river,
Lex Fridman (2:05:15.180)
and the river is all your ideas.
Jason Calacanis (2:05:17.180)
You are not a slave to any one of these ideas.
Lex Fridman (2:05:18.980)
They're just whipping by
Jason Calacanis (2:05:20.260)
like each of those little waves in the river.
Lex Fridman (2:05:22.340)
You can pick one of those ideas out
Lex Fridman (2:05:23.980)
and look at it and examine it,
Lex Fridman (2:05:25.660)
and either keep it,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:26.740)
or throw it back in the river and let it go.
Lex Fridman (2:05:28.860)
And I was like, wow, Sam, that was like,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:31.260)
of my entire friendship with Sam Harris,
Lex Fridman (2:05:32.820)
that was like the one moment where I was just like,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:34.660)
oh my God, all my life,
Lex Fridman (2:05:36.940)
I've wondered about all these thoughts in my head,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:39.660)
insecurities, you know, imposter syndrome.
Lex Fridman (2:05:43.420)
Like I didn't go to MIT, you know,
Jason Calacanis (2:05:46.100)
I'm not the smartest guy,
Lex Fridman (2:05:48.700)
but somehow I made a career writing little 50K checks
Lex Fridman (2:05:52.660)
and now, you know, $3 million checks,
Lex Fridman (2:05:54.140)
but whatever, you know, little checks
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.420)
and being a journalist and doing this little podcast,
Lex Fridman (2:05:57.540)
and it's ended up to something.
Lex Fridman (2:05:59.740)
And I kind of, I'm proud of it.
Lex Fridman (2:06:01.660)
I'm 50 and I'm kind of proud of what I did.
Lex Fridman (2:06:04.260)
And I wake up every morning after I retired,
Lex Fridman (2:06:06.140)
I say, I kind of like what I do.
Jason Calacanis (2:06:09.340)
I kind of like having the conversation
Lex Fridman (2:06:10.860)
and writing the check and then being on somebody's team.
Lex Fridman (2:06:13.580)
And I got offered to be in these giant mega funds
Lex Fridman (2:06:17.220)
and they said, Jason, you're in it,
Jason Calacanis (2:06:18.180)
you invest in 60 companies a year,
Lex Fridman (2:06:20.580)
you know, 500K at a time,
Jason Calacanis (2:06:22.100)
you put $30 million a year to work, come work with us,
Lex Fridman (2:06:25.180)
write one $50 million check
Lex Fridman (2:06:27.740)
and then you can go to Aspen and Cabo and Coachella
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.220)
and not work.
Lex Fridman (2:06:34.420)
But why are you doing all this work?
Lex Fridman (2:06:35.900)
It's like, well, the $50 million check
Jason Calacanis (2:06:38.380)
is like, it's like a formality.
Lex Fridman (2:06:40.300)
It's just like being an ATM,
Jason Calacanis (2:06:41.380)
like the companies are already huge by that time.
Lex Fridman (2:06:43.860)
I really want to meet the two people with the idea.
Jason Calacanis (2:06:46.540)
I want to meet them in year one.
Lex Fridman (2:06:48.900)
I want to meet them on day zero.
Jason Calacanis (2:06:51.020)
I want to be the guy who wrote the first,
Lex Fridman (2:06:52.500)
second or third check.
Jason Calacanis (2:06:53.780)
I want a guy who wrote the 3000th check, the last check.
Lex Fridman (2:06:57.020)
It's fucking boring.
Lex Fridman (2:06:58.020)
And make that basic human connection
Lex Fridman (2:07:00.020)
and also be with them through the rough times,
Jason Calacanis (2:07:03.620)
be with them with that first,
Lex Fridman (2:07:05.420)
I mean, the first early successes,
Jason Calacanis (2:07:07.220)
I mean, that's a beautiful.
Lex Fridman (2:07:08.580)
So great.
Jason Calacanis (2:07:09.420)
When a founder and that team get product market fit
Lex Fridman (2:07:13.980)
and you just know it's going to work,
Jason Calacanis (2:07:16.420)
oh man, Lex, it's,
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.380)
when Comm would email me and they'd say,
Jason Calacanis (2:07:21.580)
we added, you know, the company's been growing
Lex Fridman (2:07:24.100)
and we're not going to go out of business,
Lex Fridman (2:07:25.740)
but we added some sleep stuff
Lex Fridman (2:07:27.260)
and then we added this other function
Lex Fridman (2:07:29.780)
and we have a streak now and we grew 10X
Lex Fridman (2:07:33.820)
in the last, you know, three months.
Lex Fridman (2:07:36.860)
And we're good.
Lex Fridman (2:07:38.300)
You know, I was like, ah, that's nice.
Jason Calacanis (2:07:40.220)
It's real nice.
Lex Fridman (2:07:41.060)
It's like, it's a nice feeling when you,
Jason Calacanis (2:07:42.900)
well, because so many of them die.
Lex Fridman (2:07:44.140)
We talked about that J curve early.
Jason Calacanis (2:07:45.940)
Imagine it's like,
Lex Fridman (2:07:49.220)
it's like all these baby turtles going out to the ocean
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.700)
and the seagulls are ripping them to shreds
Lex Fridman (2:07:53.620)
and then the sharks are eating them.
Lex Fridman (2:07:56.220)
But then like a couple of the turtles make it
Lex Fridman (2:07:58.740)
and they become wise old 100 year old turtles, you know?
Lex Fridman (2:08:02.460)
And you're like, yep, I remember when you catched
Lex Fridman (2:08:06.100)
and like all of your brothers and sisters
Jason Calacanis (2:08:08.260)
were ripped to shreds by the seagulls
Lex Fridman (2:08:09.740)
and you made it into the water.
Lex Fridman (2:08:11.460)
And then you made it out to the deep water.
Lex Fridman (2:08:13.780)
Pretty great feeling.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:14.620)
I think there's no better way to end it.
Lex Fridman (2:08:17.220)
There it is.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:18.180)
The talk of the cruelty of life,
Lex Fridman (2:08:20.260)
that suffering that is life
Lex Fridman (2:08:22.180)
and the love amidst the suffering.
Lex Fridman (2:08:24.060)
Jason, I've been a fan of yours for a long time.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:26.820)
You're one of the most special people in Silicon Valley.
Lex Fridman (2:08:30.620)
Thanks, Lex.
Lex Fridman (2:08:31.460)
And maybe you'll also call me in one of the rough times.
Lex Fridman (2:08:34.740)
I'm sure there'll be many.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:36.220)
There will be, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:08:37.940)
There's one expression, nobody gets there alone.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:41.180)
Nobody gets there alone.
Lex Fridman (2:08:42.540)
And anybody who thinks that they got there alone
Jason Calacanis (2:08:45.100)
is delusional and kidding themselves.
Lex Fridman (2:08:47.060)
And they will at some point wake up and realize,
Jason Calacanis (2:08:48.980)
oh shit, there were a lot of people helped me get here.
Lex Fridman (2:08:52.580)
I need to write a couple of gratitude letters.
Jason Calacanis (2:08:54.500)
I got a gratitude letter the other day
Lex Fridman (2:08:55.820)
from a friend of mine who I helped.
Lex Fridman (2:08:57.900)
And I was one of the,
Lex Fridman (2:08:59.460)
you know about these gratitude letters people are writing?
Lex Fridman (2:09:02.100)
It turns out Martin Seligman in, was it Authentic Happiness?
Lex Fridman (2:09:07.940)
Anyway, the guy who really studied happiness and joy,
Jason Calacanis (2:09:10.820)
turns out one of the greatest amplifiers of joy in your life
Lex Fridman (2:09:15.100)
is to thank somebody for doing something for you.
Lex Fridman (2:09:17.740)
And somebody who I had helped just wrote me a letter
Lex Fridman (2:09:22.060)
and I got in Christmas
Lex Fridman (2:09:22.980)
and I had the stack of Christmas cards
Lex Fridman (2:09:24.460)
and I hadn't opened them.
Lex Fridman (2:09:25.580)
And it's the second week of January
Lex Fridman (2:09:27.660)
and I was just getting to like the last stack
Lex Fridman (2:09:29.980)
and I open it up and I almost missed it.
Lex Fridman (2:09:32.660)
It's incredibly heartwarming letter
Jason Calacanis (2:09:33.900)
about how meaningful like certain things I had done
Lex Fridman (2:09:37.220)
to help along the way
Lex Fridman (2:09:38.900)
and how he'd always appreciated my counsel.
Lex Fridman (2:09:41.700)
And I was just like, well, this happened 25 years ago
Lex Fridman (2:09:46.460)
and you wrote this letter now.
Lex Fridman (2:09:48.420)
And it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Jason Calacanis (2:09:50.300)
I was just like, wow, you know, if you're hearing this,
Lex Fridman (2:09:53.460)
there's probably 10 people
Jason Calacanis (2:09:54.660)
who are really instrumental in your lives, in your lives.
Lex Fridman (2:09:58.100)
Go ahead and call them on the phone,
Jason Calacanis (2:10:00.460)
write them an email or even better,
Lex Fridman (2:10:02.260)
just write a letter and send it to them
Lex Fridman (2:10:05.420)
and just tell them you're thankful.
Lex Fridman (2:10:07.020)
And let me tell you something,
Jason Calacanis (2:10:08.540)
the amplification of joy in your life will go a hundred X,
Lex Fridman (2:10:12.340)
a hundred X when you tell somebody you love them
Lex Fridman (2:10:15.420)
and that you really appreciate them
Lex Fridman (2:10:17.020)
and that what they did for you was magical.
Lex Fridman (2:10:18.580)
So just, and you can look it up, gratitude.
Lex Fridman (2:10:21.420)
Gratitude is like one of these incredible forces.
Jason Calacanis (2:10:23.900)
Amen.
Lex Fridman (2:10:24.740)
I'm grateful for being on the pod.
Jason Calacanis (2:10:25.940)
I'm grateful you wasted all this time with me.
Lex Fridman (2:10:29.860)
I love it.
Jason Calacanis (2:10:59.860)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (30:00.840)
but we won't let people get paid to do a challenge trial.
Jason Calacanis (30:04.560)
Yeah, we're weirdly risk averse in certain areas
Lex Fridman (30:06.800)
that completely don't make any sense.
Lex Fridman (30:08.080)
And this is where the world needs it.
Lex Fridman (30:10.120)
We could have said these thousand people, young people,
Jason Calacanis (30:13.280)
who we know are in all likelihood
Lex Fridman (30:14.840)
not going to have a bad outcome,
Lex Fridman (30:16.600)
but there's a possibility.
Lex Fridman (30:17.520)
There's a possibility.
Lex Fridman (30:18.360)
But it's very low.
Lex Fridman (30:19.200)
It's certainly lower than riding a motorcycle.
Jason Calacanis (30:22.040)
It's lower than riding a motorcycle.
Lex Fridman (30:23.240)
People ride motorcycles everywhere.
Jason Calacanis (30:24.400)
We have ads for motorcycles.
Lex Fridman (30:26.120)
We could have just said to those thousand people,
Jason Calacanis (30:27.480)
we'll give you a million dollars each to do this.
Lex Fridman (30:30.800)
Okay, there's your billion dollars.
Jason Calacanis (30:33.480)
We're printing trillions of dollars of money
Lex Fridman (30:35.080)
to deal with this.
Jason Calacanis (30:35.920)
If we had just done a thousand people
Lex Fridman (30:37.800)
for a million dollars each to do a challenge trial
Jason Calacanis (30:40.880)
in March, April, May, when they had the mRNA vaccines ready,
Lex Fridman (30:45.800)
we could have deployed the vaccines in the summer.
Jason Calacanis (30:47.480)
We would have been done with this.
Lex Fridman (30:49.160)
We would have been over by now.
Lex Fridman (30:50.600)
So we get to challenge all of that thinking.
Lex Fridman (30:52.720)
I think that's what the great pause did.
Jason Calacanis (30:54.520)
It's letting everybody challenge that thinking is,
Lex Fridman (30:57.240)
why do we have that rule?
Jason Calacanis (30:58.640)
Okay, yeah, we don't want to have people,
Lex Fridman (31:01.600)
you know, like give up their organs for money.
Jason Calacanis (31:03.840)
Like we obviously understand,
Lex Fridman (31:05.520)
but there's a reasonable discussion about,
Jason Calacanis (31:08.040)
well, maybe there's a level of risk in a global pandemic.
Lex Fridman (31:10.640)
I mean, we fought the Nazis, right?
Jason Calacanis (31:12.640)
We defeated the Nazis.
Lex Fridman (31:13.880)
That took a lot of deaths to do that,
Lex Fridman (31:15.440)
but we had to kill that evil.
Lex Fridman (31:17.920)
This is another evil, which we must fight.
Lex Fridman (31:20.760)
And it's going to result in,
Lex Fridman (31:22.720)
it's already resulting in thousands of people dying a day,
Lex Fridman (31:24.840)
but we could have actually stopped it earlier
Lex Fridman (31:26.920)
if we just had a reasonable discussion.
Jason Calacanis (31:28.840)
This is why podcasting is our respect what you do.
Lex Fridman (31:31.400)
This is why intelligent people are so drawn to podcasts
Jason Calacanis (31:34.200)
because you and I can expand on this
Lex Fridman (31:36.840)
and not cancel each other over this very suggestion.
Jason Calacanis (31:40.240)
When I make this suggestion,
Lex Fridman (31:41.360)
are challenge trials reasonable or not?
Jason Calacanis (31:43.360)
If I were to do that on Twitter, they'd be like,
Lex Fridman (31:45.080)
oh, Calacanis wants to give poor people coronavirus
Jason Calacanis (31:49.600)
in order to save rich people.
Lex Fridman (31:50.520)
It's like, no, I didn't say that.
Lex Fridman (31:52.960)
But you and I could have a reasonable discussion
Lex Fridman (31:55.600)
about a challenge trial is something we should consider
Jason Calacanis (31:57.880)
in a acute situation
Lex Fridman (32:00.280)
where millions of people are going to lose their lives.
Jason Calacanis (32:02.440)
Right, so that's an example
Lex Fridman (32:05.160)
of capitalism competition working really well.
Jason Calacanis (32:07.920)
There's one of the, to me, sad thing to see
Lex Fridman (32:10.120)
about coronavirus is that, for example,
Jason Calacanis (32:11.880)
testing at scale should have, it seems obvious.
Lex Fridman (32:16.480)
I was a little clueless about it,
Lex Fridman (32:18.280)
but because I thought there's no way you can have
Lex Fridman (32:21.240)
like antigen tests at hundreds of millions,
Jason Calacanis (32:24.440)
like order hundreds of millions of them and make them cheap.
Lex Fridman (32:26.880)
But actually I realized recently
Jason Calacanis (32:28.720)
that there have been available since about like May.
Lex Fridman (32:31.240)
Yeah. You were able to.
Jason Calacanis (32:32.560)
In Korea, in Finland, all over the place.
Lex Fridman (32:34.920)
You could have done mass manufacture.
Lex Fridman (32:36.760)
So there, there's a little bit of a failure
Lex Fridman (32:40.280)
of capitalism to step up.
Lex Fridman (32:43.240)
And I don't know if you agree with this,
Lex Fridman (32:45.120)
but it seems that the blame is to be placed
Jason Calacanis (32:47.480)
at the regulators and the various institutions.
Lex Fridman (32:52.080)
Chrony capitalism in all likelihood
Jason Calacanis (32:54.000)
is what stopped it here in America.
Lex Fridman (32:55.680)
I mean, I had friends who had imported them
Jason Calacanis (32:58.560)
from other countries, the testing kits.
Lex Fridman (33:01.000)
And you've probably been to parties
Jason Calacanis (33:02.560)
where people had these kinds of testing kits
Lex Fridman (33:04.160)
from other countries and we're sitting here
Lex Fridman (33:06.200)
and they're just approving them now.
Lex Fridman (33:07.560)
Really, in February, month 11 of the pandemic in America,
Jason Calacanis (33:11.440)
we're gonna have testing online, really.
Lex Fridman (33:13.600)
I mean, even if these tests were 80% effective
Lex Fridman (33:17.200)
and they're 95% effective, mass producing them,
Lex Fridman (33:20.440)
we should have sent them in every postal,
Jason Calacanis (33:23.600)
anybody with a post office box with a mailing address
Lex Fridman (33:27.640)
should have had 10 of them put in their mailing address
Jason Calacanis (33:29.320)
just for free from the government.
Lex Fridman (33:30.800)
And then everybody would be testing
Lex Fridman (33:32.360)
and we would have contained it.
Lex Fridman (33:33.480)
We don't have test and trace here in the United States.
Jason Calacanis (33:35.800)
Well, all the countries that are on the other side of COVID
Lex Fridman (33:39.320)
did it by having testing, tracing
Lex Fridman (33:42.320)
and closing their borders and masks.
Lex Fridman (33:44.400)
That's the combination that works.
Jason Calacanis (33:46.280)
The problem with the coronavirus
Lex Fridman (33:48.600)
is while there's a lot of institutions
Jason Calacanis (33:51.000)
did not behave their best,
Lex Fridman (33:52.480)
it's also the case that there's a lot of uncertainty.
Lex Fridman (33:54.920)
So I tend to give a little bit of a pass
Lex Fridman (33:57.480)
to everybody involved for the uncertainty.
Jason Calacanis (34:00.520)
We were all.
Lex Fridman (34:02.120)
I give them that until June.
Jason Calacanis (34:03.760)
I wonder how history will remember this whole period.
Lex Fridman (34:06.360)
I'd love to ask you,
Jason Calacanis (34:07.920)
because you were an early investor in Robinhoods
Lex Fridman (34:10.600)
and you're in a very nice place
Jason Calacanis (34:14.600)
of being a huge supporter of the sort of Wall Street bets
Lex Fridman (34:19.880)
kind of distributed power of the people.
Lex Fridman (34:22.880)
And at the same time, because of you being an investor,
Lex Fridman (34:27.320)
like intellectually giving a chance to Robinhood
Jason Calacanis (34:31.000)
in this kind of chaotic time of conversations
Lex Fridman (34:33.640)
to think about like, well, what did they do right?
Lex Fridman (34:36.320)
What did they do wrong?
Lex Fridman (34:37.840)
So you have a kind of a balance view on the whole thing,
Jason Calacanis (34:40.160)
which is really nice.
Lex Fridman (34:41.880)
We've talked about what Robinhood did right, I think.
Lex Fridman (34:46.200)
Can you sort of steel man at your mouth's argument
Lex Fridman (34:51.400)
of what Robinhood did wrong in the last few days?
Jason Calacanis (34:56.360)
Yeah, I mean, communication is always
Lex Fridman (34:59.080)
the number one issue with these startups, right?
Lex Fridman (35:00.800)
And if you, you have to get ahead of any problem
Lex Fridman (35:04.160)
and you have to put all the bad news out immediately.
Lex Fridman (35:07.000)
And in the case of Robinhood, it seems based on
Lex Fridman (35:09.240)
what has been in the papers and what Robinhood said publicly
Lex Fridman (35:11.920)
is that they had this kind of liquidity crisis, right?
Lex Fridman (35:14.320)
Where they were being, because of these exchanges telling
Jason Calacanis (35:17.960)
them you have to put up this amount of money in collateral
Lex Fridman (35:20.000)
and them being pinned at number one in the app store.
Jason Calacanis (35:22.800)
There were so many people trying to buy five shares
Lex Fridman (35:25.760)
of this stock, five shares of this meme stock
Jason Calacanis (35:28.480)
that it kind of broke their system.
Lex Fridman (35:30.200)
And then the people who clear the trades for them,
Jason Calacanis (35:32.120)
they said, you gotta put up a billion dollars,
Lex Fridman (35:33.920)
two billion dollars, three billion dollars.
Jason Calacanis (35:35.040)
We can't do that overnight.
Lex Fridman (35:36.720)
And I think that they were in an uncomfortable situation
Jason Calacanis (35:40.400)
of like going on TV and saying, we have a liquidity crisis.
Lex Fridman (35:44.360)
Like that could be like a run on the bag.
Jason Calacanis (35:46.640)
Everybody then logs in at the same time to Robinhood
Lex Fridman (35:49.040)
and tries to sell every share they own
Jason Calacanis (35:50.280)
because they're afraid that the whole thing's
Lex Fridman (35:51.400)
gonna collapse, right?
Lex Fridman (35:52.240)
So I think there was this kind of like black swan event
Lex Fridman (35:55.200)
and they probably didn't communicate it all that well.
Jason Calacanis (35:57.960)
At the center of that, this is really interesting.
Lex Fridman (36:00.280)
Maybe you can comment on the nature of communication.
Jason Calacanis (36:03.680)
Vlad, the CEO, the guy you met at the bar,
Lex Fridman (36:07.400)
was I think at the center of the communication, right?
Lex Fridman (36:10.680)
So Elon is an example of a guy who also is
Lex Fridman (36:13.280)
at the center of the communication
Jason Calacanis (36:14.560)
for his particular set of companies.
Lex Fridman (36:16.280)
And that on Twitter seems to be a really powerful way
Jason Calacanis (36:19.220)
to communicate.
Lex Fridman (36:20.600)
And there was something, this is me saying it,
Jason Calacanis (36:23.160)
there was something about Vlad that sounded
Lex Fridman (36:26.800)
like he's hiding stuff.
Jason Calacanis (36:29.680)
As opposed to Elon, it doesn't sound
Lex Fridman (36:32.720)
like he's hiding stuff.
Jason Calacanis (36:33.880)
It could be the nature, the beat,
Lex Fridman (36:36.480)
the timing of the conversation.
Jason Calacanis (36:38.480)
Same thing with Mark Zuckerberg.
Lex Fridman (36:40.220)
Mark Zuckerberg for some reason often sounds
Jason Calacanis (36:42.480)
like he's hiding something.
Lex Fridman (36:43.920)
And then there's like Jack Dorsey is much less so.
Lex Fridman (36:47.560)
And I don't know what that is about the CEOs
Lex Fridman (36:49.920)
that makes you trust them and not.
Jason Calacanis (36:51.880)
Might be the point in time, like in terms of escape velocity.
Lex Fridman (36:57.080)
There might be nondisclosures in place
Jason Calacanis (37:01.240)
that we're not aware of where they're not allowed
Lex Fridman (37:03.360)
to talk about certain relationships.
Jason Calacanis (37:04.680)
I see.
Lex Fridman (37:05.520)
And that results like in Vlad's case,
Lex Fridman (37:08.480)
and that results in you being like acting weird and nervous.
Lex Fridman (37:12.880)
Or nervous.
Jason Calacanis (37:13.720)
Yeah, it could just be the person is nervous.
Lex Fridman (37:15.160)
So it's really hard to be building one of these companies
Lex Fridman (37:18.380)
and you're at scale and oh my Lord,
Lex Fridman (37:21.960)
the entire thing's coming apart
Lex Fridman (37:23.400)
and you're the most hated person for that day.
Lex Fridman (37:25.240)
You know how the rage cycle works
Lex Fridman (37:26.600)
and the media is just so crazy
Lex Fridman (37:29.560)
when they get their hooks into something.
Jason Calacanis (37:31.360)
I saw it happen with Uber.
Lex Fridman (37:32.440)
We saw it happen with Facebook and even Tesla.
Jason Calacanis (37:34.720)
There were times when people did stupid things
Lex Fridman (37:37.880)
with autopilot and it's like, okay,
Jason Calacanis (37:39.740)
somebody is watching a movie and sleeping in their car
Lex Fridman (37:42.920)
or leaving the driver's seat
Jason Calacanis (37:44.280)
against all the rules of autopilot
Lex Fridman (37:46.280)
and somehow Tesla's responsible for that.
Jason Calacanis (37:47.860)
It's like we have people who stand on top
Lex Fridman (37:49.960)
of their motorcycles and drive down the road
Jason Calacanis (37:51.680)
on a motorcycle.
Lex Fridman (37:53.280)
And we don't blame Yamaha or Harley Davidson
Jason Calacanis (37:56.280)
for some idiot standing on the seat of their motorcycle
Lex Fridman (37:58.520)
on a highway going 60 miles an hour.
Jason Calacanis (37:59.840)
We just say, that person's an idiot.
Lex Fridman (38:02.000)
But when new technology comes out,
Jason Calacanis (38:04.140)
we blame the technology, not the person operating it.
Lex Fridman (38:07.720)
And if you are going to operate,
Jason Calacanis (38:11.460)
we basically vilify it and demonize it.
Lex Fridman (38:13.040)
I think that is part of it.
Jason Calacanis (38:14.280)
Like when the person at, I remember Airbnb,
Lex Fridman (38:16.920)
we always thought, what if somebody trashes your apartment?
Lex Fridman (38:19.640)
And then sure enough, a bunch of meth heads
Lex Fridman (38:21.360)
rented this poor woman's apartment.
Jason Calacanis (38:22.960)
She left all of her stuff in it.
Lex Fridman (38:24.280)
And then a bunch of meth heads had a drug party,
Jason Calacanis (38:27.080)
destroyed her apartment, ripped up all her photos
Lex Fridman (38:29.840)
and went crazy.
Lex Fridman (38:31.320)
And we knew that day would happen,
Lex Fridman (38:32.360)
but nobody remembers it now.
Lex Fridman (38:33.320)
But it was the number one story on every news channel
Lex Fridman (38:36.440)
because wow, that's an exciting story.
Lex Fridman (38:38.480)
And I just thought to myself,
Lex Fridman (38:40.240)
I wonder if there are any parties in hotel rooms
Jason Calacanis (38:43.880)
where the hotel room is being trashed
Lex Fridman (38:45.040)
and people are doing drugs and crazy things.
Jason Calacanis (38:47.360)
It's like, yes, that's basically every hotel
Lex Fridman (38:49.920)
in Los Angeles right now is being destroyed
Jason Calacanis (38:52.240)
by some rock band that's throwing a TV out the window.
Lex Fridman (38:55.240)
Like we expected in a hotel,
Jason Calacanis (38:58.160)
we just didn't expect it in somebody's house with Airbnb.
Lex Fridman (39:00.000)
And then Airbnb created rules around,
Jason Calacanis (39:02.040)
you can't rent an Airbnb for a party and they learn.
Lex Fridman (39:05.360)
So I think there's a learning curve with these companies
Lex Fridman (39:07.640)
and they do get to scale at a level
Lex Fridman (39:09.920)
that is unprecedented.
Jason Calacanis (39:11.680)
It used to take decades for a company
Lex Fridman (39:13.400)
to become an international phenomenon.
Jason Calacanis (39:15.200)
Now it happens in two, three, four years.
Lex Fridman (39:17.480)
I mean, look at Clubhouse.
Jason Calacanis (39:18.520)
This thing went from being a private beta six months ago
Lex Fridman (39:22.080)
to being the number one app in Germany
Lex Fridman (39:24.320)
and in Japan and here.
Lex Fridman (39:26.320)
Like just like that, boom.
Lex Fridman (39:28.000)
And it's because there's an ecosystem
Lex Fridman (39:30.240)
that has never existed, the app store.
Jason Calacanis (39:32.440)
Then there's payments online.
Lex Fridman (39:35.760)
And then everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket.
Jason Calacanis (39:38.960)
The thing people got wrong
Lex Fridman (39:40.200)
about entrepreneurship technology and business
Jason Calacanis (39:44.800)
over the last couple of decades
Lex Fridman (39:45.760)
was just how big the market was
Lex Fridman (39:48.040)
and then how quickly you could achieve relevancy
Lex Fridman (39:53.360)
in these markets.
Jason Calacanis (39:55.400)
We thought the market was like the 60 million homes
Lex Fridman (39:58.000)
were broadband.
Lex Fridman (39:58.920)
And originally it was like maybe 10 or 20.
Lex Fridman (40:00.720)
Then it became 60 million.
Jason Calacanis (40:02.000)
Then it was like, okay,
Lex Fridman (40:02.840)
well, how many hours are you at your desktop computer?
Jason Calacanis (40:05.120)
Well, like probably at our computers for five hours a day,
Lex Fridman (40:07.240)
10 hours a day at work, three hours a day on our own.
Lex Fridman (40:10.480)
And then it was like,
Lex Fridman (40:11.320)
yeah, nobody's on their desktop computer.
Jason Calacanis (40:12.480)
Everybody's on their mobile phone.
Lex Fridman (40:14.080)
Oh, and by the way, they have it with them.
Lex Fridman (40:15.480)
So the people with mobile phones
Lex Fridman (40:16.480)
are now using this high speed device with an app store
Jason Calacanis (40:20.160)
with their credit card in it.
Lex Fridman (40:21.960)
In the early days of the internet,
Jason Calacanis (40:23.360)
people were scared to put their credit card on the internet.
Lex Fridman (40:25.440)
That was considered a really dumb thing to do.
Jason Calacanis (40:27.200)
If you put your credit card on the internet,
Lex Fridman (40:28.360)
you're gonna lose all your money.
Jason Calacanis (40:30.320)
They're gonna hack you or whatever.
Lex Fridman (40:32.240)
And now it's just amazing to me
Lex Fridman (40:34.960)
how quickly when a company hits,
Lex Fridman (40:37.120)
how quickly it can get to a million subscribers
Lex Fridman (40:39.560)
or 10 million or a billion users, right?
Lex Fridman (40:42.160)
And there's all these networks, like social networks
Jason Calacanis (40:44.040)
that allow the spread of the viral spread
Lex Fridman (40:47.440)
of like a new startup, a new company, a new app
Jason Calacanis (40:51.920)
to be announced.
Lex Fridman (40:52.760)
Anything.
Lex Fridman (40:53.760)
An idea, a podcast, right?
Lex Fridman (40:55.680)
A single thing, a single meme could change the world.
Jason Calacanis (40:58.240)
Speaking of Clubhouse, I just wanna,
Lex Fridman (41:00.400)
we're saying so many interesting things,
Lex Fridman (41:01.800)
but there was a magical moment with Vlad and Elon
Lex Fridman (41:04.960)
on Clubhouse.
Jason Calacanis (41:05.800)
I don't know if you got that.
Lex Fridman (41:06.640)
That was wild.
Jason Calacanis (41:07.480)
Yes, is there, do you have thoughts about that interaction
Lex Fridman (41:13.040)
which felt like so many aspects of this whole situation
Jason Calacanis (41:17.080)
feels like totally novel, surreal,
Lex Fridman (41:20.160)
like it's defining a new era.
Jason Calacanis (41:22.040)
It is, yes.
Lex Fridman (41:23.080)
Like a billionaire, the richest human on earth
Jason Calacanis (41:25.960)
is interviewing the person at the center
Lex Fridman (41:30.280)
of one of the most interesting mass scale
Jason Calacanis (41:34.320)
like power battles in finance ever, perhaps.
Lex Fridman (41:39.480)
And by the way, seven movies have been sold two weeks.
Jason Calacanis (41:43.760)
Just think about how fast things are moving, Lex.
Lex Fridman (41:46.160)
This thing happens.
Jason Calacanis (41:48.280)
Like people had the idea to short the stock six months ago.
Lex Fridman (41:51.400)
They start doing their research.
Jason Calacanis (41:52.600)
They build an army.
Lex Fridman (41:53.440)
They execute the trade.
Jason Calacanis (41:55.360)
The system goes down.
Lex Fridman (41:57.080)
Robinhood raises $3.5 billion in four days.
Jason Calacanis (42:00.560)
Elon is interviewing them on Clubhouse on Sunday
Lex Fridman (42:03.200)
after the Wednesday it happened.
Lex Fridman (42:04.480)
And now here we are, it's 10 days later.
Lex Fridman (42:08.040)
Doesn't it feel like it's been 10 months?
Jason Calacanis (42:12.040)
It's been 10 days, Lex.
Lex Fridman (42:13.280)
It's been 10 days.
Jason Calacanis (42:14.240)
10 days.
Lex Fridman (42:15.080)
Plus, there's like a new president,
Jason Calacanis (42:16.320)
all these things, and everyone forgot.
Lex Fridman (42:18.040)
Oh, and there was an insurrection.
Jason Calacanis (42:19.520)
By the way, we also almost had a revolution at the Capitol
Lex Fridman (42:21.840)
where a bunch of crazy people who have guns
Lex Fridman (42:26.240)
and body armor, and then a bunch of them
Lex Fridman (42:28.680)
who are just yoloing in cosplay, took over the Capitol.
Jason Calacanis (42:32.840)
Well, so, and the other more dramatic thing to me is.
Lex Fridman (42:35.280)
That was one month ago.
Jason Calacanis (42:36.240)
That was one month.
Lex Fridman (42:37.080)
And the president of the United States got banned
Jason Calacanis (42:39.920)
from every major social network,
Lex Fridman (42:42.400)
and which I think I'm still deeply troubled by
Jason Calacanis (42:47.120)
is Parler being removed from AWS.
Lex Fridman (42:49.760)
That changed the way, that changed a lot of things.
Jason Calacanis (42:53.520)
As somebody who's an aspiring entrepreneur,
Lex Fridman (42:56.400)
that changed the way I see the world.
Jason Calacanis (42:58.240)
That little, maybe I'm being over dramatic, but.
Lex Fridman (43:00.920)
No, you're not.
Jason Calacanis (43:01.760)
I think you're paranoid for a reason.
Lex Fridman (43:03.840)
You're paranoid for a very good reason,
Jason Calacanis (43:05.640)
which is as big as these companies can become,
Lex Fridman (43:08.880)
they are beholden to the mob.
Lex Fridman (43:10.720)
And if the mob says, hey, this person needs to be canceled,
Lex Fridman (43:14.560)
they're going to get canceled
Jason Calacanis (43:16.000)
because you can't lose your entire audience.
Lex Fridman (43:18.400)
You could lose your whole customer base,
Lex Fridman (43:19.800)
and you could lose all your employees.
Lex Fridman (43:21.640)
I think what's interesting about your fear
Jason Calacanis (43:24.160)
about Parler and AWS taking off
Lex Fridman (43:25.920)
is we went from being like a social network,
Jason Calacanis (43:27.960)
which is the software layer.
Lex Fridman (43:30.600)
And then we went to like the infrastructure layer,
Lex Fridman (43:33.760)
and they'll even go after like Cloudflare,
Lex Fridman (43:36.200)
which is a CDN provider, right?
Jason Calacanis (43:37.680)
They're just like a plumbing,
Lex Fridman (43:39.200)
it's like sort of like the telephone.
Lex Fridman (43:41.640)
So we're basically holding everybody responsible
Lex Fridman (43:44.720)
on the whole chain of events here.
Lex Fridman (43:45.880)
And what that's going to do is,
Lex Fridman (43:48.440)
I'm not a huge believer in crypto,
Lex Fridman (43:50.040)
but distributed computing,
Lex Fridman (43:52.080)
where nobody in decentralized
Lex Fridman (43:54.120)
and distributed computing platforms and open standards,
Lex Fridman (43:58.320)
podcasting is an open standard,
Jason Calacanis (43:59.800)
the web is an open standard, FTP was an open standard,
Lex Fridman (44:01.880)
but Twitter and Facebook are closed.
Lex Fridman (44:07.080)
And what's going to happen is we will see
Lex Fridman (44:09.520)
a group of individuals create peer to peer networks
Jason Calacanis (44:12.480)
for social media, where nobody can control it.
Lex Fridman (44:15.120)
And the same for cloud computing,
Jason Calacanis (44:16.920)
where there's a crypto project where everybody will,
Lex Fridman (44:22.280)
and I invested in a company that tried to do this
Lex Fridman (44:24.080)
and got sold and it didn't work out,
Lex Fridman (44:26.280)
but take your hard drive on your computer at home,
Jason Calacanis (44:30.120)
you give a terabyte of your 10 terabyte drive
Lex Fridman (44:33.280)
over to the cloud,
Lex Fridman (44:34.440)
and then everybody else does their terabyte.
Lex Fridman (44:36.000)
And then all of a sudden you've got this virtual cloud
Lex Fridman (44:38.320)
and anybody can store stuff on it and it's all encrypted,
Lex Fridman (44:40.600)
and then nobody can stop it.
Lex Fridman (44:41.880)
And that could be tweets, it could be videos.
Lex Fridman (44:43.640)
And so this idea that YouTube will be able to tell people,
Jason Calacanis (44:48.040)
to kick people off because they're skeptics of,
Lex Fridman (44:50.920)
I don't know, the pandemic or the vaccine,
Jason Calacanis (44:52.600)
or they've, they'll make things
Lex Fridman (44:55.720)
that are more censorship resistant.
Jason Calacanis (44:57.200)
I think that'll be the reaction to all of this.
Lex Fridman (44:59.200)
This is my question for you,
Jason Calacanis (45:00.600)
going back to that crappy bar and people pitching you,
Lex Fridman (45:03.440)
is there, like with Clubhouse, do you see competitors,
Lex Fridman (45:08.640)
do you think it's possible that another,
Lex Fridman (45:11.200)
perhaps more decentralized or another kind
Jason Calacanis (45:13.920)
of social media will emerge
Lex Fridman (45:15.200)
that will take on Twitter and Facebook
Lex Fridman (45:17.800)
and might be able to replace them?
Lex Fridman (45:19.240)
If you look at the whole landscape with Clubhouse
Lex Fridman (45:22.840)
and everything else,
Lex Fridman (45:23.680)
do you think some other company might emerge?
Jason Calacanis (45:26.440)
There'll be 10 versions of Clubhouse.
Lex Fridman (45:28.160)
We looked at social networking.
Jason Calacanis (45:29.320)
We thought Friendster was it.
Lex Fridman (45:31.800)
Like Friendster was so good,
Jason Calacanis (45:33.000)
nobody would be able to compete with that.
Lex Fridman (45:33.960)
It was growing so quickly.
Lex Fridman (45:35.200)
And then MySpace was a juggernaut
Lex Fridman (45:36.840)
and they hit a hundred million in revenue
Lex Fridman (45:38.440)
and a hundred million users.
Lex Fridman (45:39.560)
And it was like, well, that's game over.
Lex Fridman (45:40.800)
And then Facebook and LinkedIn and Snapchat
Lex Fridman (45:43.920)
and FriendFeed and countless others.
Lex Fridman (45:46.360)
So there's usually 20 people who will win in a category
Lex Fridman (45:50.480)
and 80% of the category will be owned
Jason Calacanis (45:53.240)
by the top two or three players.
Lex Fridman (45:55.000)
But will those players change, do you think?
Lex Fridman (45:57.320)
What's your sense of that?
Lex Fridman (45:58.160)
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jason Calacanis (45:59.000)
I mean, if Facebook hadn't bought Instagram,
Lex Fridman (46:01.320)
it would be a company in decline right now.
Lex Fridman (46:02.880)
People would be shorting the stock, right?
Lex Fridman (46:04.200)
Facebook peaked and then was sort of heading down
Lex Fridman (46:07.000)
and Instagram saved them and WhatsApp saved them.
Lex Fridman (46:09.200)
So, you know, that's another kind of weird moment
Jason Calacanis (46:11.760)
in history that they were able to accumulate
Lex Fridman (46:13.600)
that much power and consolidate that much power.
Jason Calacanis (46:15.760)
Instagram should have never sold to them.
Lex Fridman (46:17.200)
That should have gone public.
Jason Calacanis (46:18.040)
They had just raised money from Sequoia
Lex Fridman (46:20.080)
and they had raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation
Lex Fridman (46:23.680)
and they didn't need to sell.
Lex Fridman (46:24.760)
And that was a big mistake to sell.
Jason Calacanis (46:27.040)
They should have kept going
Lex Fridman (46:27.880)
and they should have took on Facebook.
Lex Fridman (46:29.520)
And if Instagram was a standalone company right now,
Lex Fridman (46:31.480)
it'd be worth 500 million, 500 billion, yeah.
Lex Fridman (46:35.040)
Do you think Facebook might buy Clubhouse has been?
Lex Fridman (46:38.560)
Oh, they'll probably copy it.
Jason Calacanis (46:39.760)
I mean, Zuckerberg has no moral compass
Lex Fridman (46:42.800)
or ethics or anything.
Jason Calacanis (46:43.640)
I mean, he's a marauder.
Lex Fridman (46:44.640)
I mean, he basically copied Snapchat seven times.
Jason Calacanis (46:48.400)
Like he did poke and he just kept trying
Lex Fridman (46:50.440)
and trying and trying.
Jason Calacanis (46:51.600)
Part of the reason why the WhatsApp founders
Lex Fridman (46:53.800)
and the Instagram founders left
Jason Calacanis (46:54.920)
is they found Zuckerberg so distasteful
Lex Fridman (46:57.200)
in terms of his ability to copy.
Lex Fridman (46:59.640)
What do you think makes a great leader in that sense?
Lex Fridman (47:02.520)
Because, okay, so when I look at Zuckerberg.
Jason Calacanis (47:05.520)
He's a great executor.
Lex Fridman (47:06.920)
Is he a great executor?
Jason Calacanis (47:07.760)
I don't think he's a great leader.
Lex Fridman (47:09.040)
I was bullish on,
Jason Calacanis (47:10.080)
I was excited by Facebook in the very early days.
Lex Fridman (47:13.360)
I thought it was an exciting opportunity to connect people
Lex Fridman (47:15.400)
and stuff started going wrong in certain kinds of ways.
Lex Fridman (47:18.680)
And again, maybe it's our human nature,
Lex Fridman (47:22.200)
but I attribute a lot of that to the leadership.
Lex Fridman (47:25.240)
Absolutely.
Jason Calacanis (47:26.200)
I mean, the guy started it because he was unable
Lex Fridman (47:29.000)
to ask girls if they were single and on a date.
Jason Calacanis (47:31.280)
I mean, that was his explicit.
Lex Fridman (47:32.120)
That could be a good motivator.
Jason Calacanis (47:33.040)
That could be a good motivator.
Lex Fridman (47:33.880)
Well, I mean, it does.
Jason Calacanis (47:34.720)
I mean, listen, the motivation of 18, 19 year old men
Lex Fridman (47:36.880)
or his, yeah, pretty clear.
Jason Calacanis (47:39.600)
He was just trying to, he had no game.
Lex Fridman (47:41.840)
He had no game and he needed to know who was single
Lex Fridman (47:44.600)
so he could at least have a shot at getting a date.
Lex Fridman (47:48.080)
It's a little creepy.
Jason Calacanis (47:48.920)
A little creepy, yeah.
Lex Fridman (47:49.760)
He, I think, was so obsessed with engagement and winning.
Lex Fridman (47:54.040)
And he's kind of like one of those friends you have
Lex Fridman (47:56.280)
who's just really good at playing a video game,
Lex Fridman (47:58.160)
but maybe doesn't see the bigger picture in life.
Lex Fridman (48:00.200)
And I mean, there's a reason why everybody who worked
Jason Calacanis (48:02.720)
for him hates him and doesn't talk to him anymore
Lex Fridman (48:04.720)
and then actively derides him.
Jason Calacanis (48:06.040)
Like so many, the people who sold WhatsApp to him
Lex Fridman (48:10.680)
then backed other projects like Telegram
Lex Fridman (48:13.320)
and said horrible things about him on the way out.
Lex Fridman (48:15.000)
These are the people he made billionaires.
Lex Fridman (48:16.680)
And they really don't like him.
Lex Fridman (48:19.160)
So I think there is something that he does
Jason Calacanis (48:21.760)
that does not breed loyalty,
Lex Fridman (48:23.400)
but he's very successful in his focus,
Jason Calacanis (48:25.560)
which is growth is all that matters.
Lex Fridman (48:27.280)
He's a marauder and taking friction out of products
Lex Fridman (48:30.240)
and processes is the playbook of Silicon Valley
Lex Fridman (48:32.760)
for the last decade or two.
Lex Fridman (48:34.340)
So whatever the friction is.
Lex Fridman (48:35.180)
It's like poetry what you're saying right now.
Jason Calacanis (48:36.520)
It's like you're speaking so fast
Lex Fridman (48:37.800)
that I almost forget that you're dropping bombs.
Lex Fridman (48:40.540)
But so removing the, removing friction.
Lex Fridman (48:43.720)
And you're saying Facebook is exceptionally good
Jason Calacanis (48:45.440)
at removing friction. He was the best at it.
Lex Fridman (48:46.940)
I mean, at Uber, they were like,
Jason Calacanis (48:49.360)
we're gonna take out tipping.
Lex Fridman (48:50.720)
We're gonna take out the need for you
Jason Calacanis (48:52.520)
to take out your credit card and do payment.
Lex Fridman (48:54.520)
It's just gonna be in your wallet.
Jason Calacanis (48:56.260)
You got picked up, you leave, that's it.
Lex Fridman (48:59.080)
And I was like, we should have tipping.
Lex Fridman (49:00.240)
And they're like, it adds a step.
Lex Fridman (49:02.040)
And we're trying to have no steps.
Jason Calacanis (49:03.800)
You put your address in, you click the button
Lex Fridman (49:06.120)
and you do nothing else.
Lex Fridman (49:07.600)
And so we've been obsessed here in Silicon Valley
Lex Fridman (49:09.400)
is how many clicks can we take out of the process?
Jason Calacanis (49:12.080)
I guess Amazon is incredible at that as well.
Lex Fridman (49:13.960)
Absolutely, one click was the start of it.
Lex Fridman (49:15.720)
And then you look at Clubhouse as an example,
Lex Fridman (49:17.960)
you open Clubhouse and you see rooms,
Jason Calacanis (49:19.800)
you click on it, you're listening.
Lex Fridman (49:21.100)
So in one click, you're listening.
Lex Fridman (49:22.920)
And then in one click, if you raise your hand
Lex Fridman (49:25.200)
or you get invited and you say, yes, you're speaking.
Lex Fridman (49:27.920)
So it's two clicks to speak, one click to listen.
Lex Fridman (49:31.280)
I mean, the only way they could make that app work
Jason Calacanis (49:34.080)
even faster is if you opened it up
Lex Fridman (49:35.620)
and your microphone was turned on,
Jason Calacanis (49:37.740)
which is kind of scary, but that is the next evolution.
Lex Fridman (49:41.800)
And what happens when you go that fast
Jason Calacanis (49:43.920)
is you get unintended consequences.
Lex Fridman (49:46.000)
And so this is why Facebook has had more fines
Jason Calacanis (49:48.280)
than any company in the history of Silicon Valley,
Lex Fridman (49:49.880)
just giant fines for doing stuff like this.
Lex Fridman (49:52.160)
And one of them was, I don't know if you remember
Lex Fridman (49:54.300)
when they created groups
Jason Calacanis (49:55.320)
or if you have a group for your podcast,
Lex Fridman (49:57.360)
but you can just add people to a group
Jason Calacanis (49:59.480)
without their permission.
Lex Fridman (50:01.280)
And there was this famous case
Jason Calacanis (50:02.520)
when they first came out with it.
Lex Fridman (50:04.800)
Somebody created a Nambla fake group,
Jason Calacanis (50:07.760)
National Man Love Boy Association or whatever,
Lex Fridman (50:10.120)
like pedophilia association.
Lex Fridman (50:12.080)
And they added Zuckerberg, Mike Arrington, myself,
Lex Fridman (50:14.440)
and like 20 other famous people in Silicon Valley.
Lex Fridman (50:17.200)
And I was like, and then somebody takes a screenshot of it
Lex Fridman (50:19.200)
and they're like, you're in Nambla?
Lex Fridman (50:20.240)
And I'm like, no.
Lex Fridman (50:22.840)
Facebook, and then Zuckerberg's response was,
Jason Calacanis (50:25.080)
well, if your friends put you in that Nambla group,
Lex Fridman (50:26.960)
you should get new friends.
Lex Fridman (50:27.800)
And it was like, you got put in there too.
Lex Fridman (50:29.600)
And then the sad part about it was
Jason Calacanis (50:33.480)
there were a group of young men who were gay
Lex Fridman (50:35.560)
and who were in college
Lex Fridman (50:36.560)
and there was a gay choir in their college
Lex Fridman (50:38.520)
and the person who was coordinating their Facebook group
Jason Calacanis (50:41.640)
added them.
Lex Fridman (50:42.760)
So Zuckerberg, it wasn't enough for Zuckerberg
Jason Calacanis (50:44.760)
to make it so anybody could add anybody to any group
Lex Fridman (50:48.040)
because it will grow faster,
Jason Calacanis (50:49.680)
let alone you have to confirm
Lex Fridman (50:50.840)
you wanna be added to the group.
Lex Fridman (50:52.560)
What it also did was posted it on their walls
Lex Fridman (50:54.720)
to increase engagement.
Lex Fridman (50:56.720)
And what they inadvertently did was
Lex Fridman (50:58.680)
they outed a bunch of 18, 19 year olds in college
Jason Calacanis (51:01.120)
to their families
Lex Fridman (51:03.120)
because they joined the gay men's choir at some college.
Lex Fridman (51:06.480)
And this is the kind of way,
Lex Fridman (51:08.720)
this is where Silicon Valley needs to check itself
Lex Fridman (51:11.080)
and to do better is you have to really think,
Lex Fridman (51:14.720)
well, there is my incentive to grow faster
Lex Fridman (51:16.880)
and then there's what's right for society
Lex Fridman (51:18.520)
and for the individual.
Jason Calacanis (51:19.360)
You gotta think it through, think it through.
Lex Fridman (51:21.960)
It's sometimes very difficult.
Jason Calacanis (51:23.800)
This is where vision is required
Lex Fridman (51:25.560)
to anticipate the unintended consequences.
Lex Fridman (51:28.680)
And it seems like Mark Zuckerberg is not very good at that.
Lex Fridman (51:33.000)
You've talked to so many great leaders in this world,
Jason Calacanis (51:37.200)
privately and publicly.
Lex Fridman (51:39.360)
What do you think makes a great leader
Lex Fridman (51:42.400)
of these tech companies?
Lex Fridman (51:44.480)
Do you have an example?
Lex Fridman (51:45.320)
Is Elon to you a great leader?
Lex Fridman (51:47.360)
He's also a controversial one, right?
Jason Calacanis (51:49.200)
There's a love and hate, a controversial sense
Lex Fridman (51:52.440)
that there is, and I know a lot of people work with him,
Jason Calacanis (51:56.040)
for him, that there's also a love, hate relationship.
Lex Fridman (52:00.280)
The hate comes from the fact
Jason Calacanis (52:01.680)
that they get pushed extremely hard.
Lex Fridman (52:04.640)
It's a very competitive environment,
Lex Fridman (52:07.560)
but it's a positive one
Lex Fridman (52:10.120)
because there's a vision that's underlying.
Jason Calacanis (52:12.880)
It's similar to the Steve Jobs thing.
Lex Fridman (52:15.040)
And it has to do with the,
Jason Calacanis (52:17.080)
back to our Michael Jordan discussion as well,
Lex Fridman (52:19.880)
that there seems to be the demons involved in tension
Lex Fridman (52:23.280)
and just anxiety, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (52:27.840)
If you wanna do great things,
Jason Calacanis (52:30.080)
there will be some suffering
Lex Fridman (52:32.320)
and there'll be some pain,
Lex Fridman (52:34.600)
and it's not easy if you wanna change the world.
Lex Fridman (52:37.000)
And then some people have this expectation
Jason Calacanis (52:39.000)
that it's going to be easy.
Lex Fridman (52:41.200)
And what you'll typically find for any great leader
Jason Calacanis (52:44.640)
who's trying to do something super ambitious,
Lex Fridman (52:47.160)
like if you wanna be like,
Jason Calacanis (52:48.600)
if you're a rich guy and you start a restaurant
Lex Fridman (52:50.760)
and you don't care about making money
Lex Fridman (52:52.080)
and people have made restaurants before,
Lex Fridman (52:54.240)
you could be high fives
Lex Fridman (52:55.160)
and everybody could love you or whatever.
Lex Fridman (52:56.880)
But if you wanna change the world,
Jason Calacanis (52:58.800)
you wanna do something hard driving,
Lex Fridman (52:59.880)
there's gonna be sacrifice involved.
Lex Fridman (53:01.440)
And so the problem is people are looking at something
Lex Fridman (53:05.360)
that is an Olympic caliber sport
Jason Calacanis (53:08.080)
or a Navy SEALs like effort.
Lex Fridman (53:10.560)
In other words, an effort that requires massive sacrifice.
Jason Calacanis (53:13.680)
We would not look at somebody who wins a gold medal,
Lex Fridman (53:16.040)
like Michael Phelps and say,
Jason Calacanis (53:17.360)
oh my God, he had to get up at 4 a.m. every day
Lex Fridman (53:20.040)
and he had to swim and he had to do an ice bath.
Jason Calacanis (53:22.320)
Oh my God, that poor guy, he suffered, he was tortured.
Lex Fridman (53:25.720)
People were super mean to him,
Jason Calacanis (53:27.640)
they put him in an ice bath.
Lex Fridman (53:28.480)
It was like, no, he wanted to be
Jason Calacanis (53:30.280)
the greatest swimmer of all time
Lex Fridman (53:32.080)
and he knew what the sacrifice entailed.
Lex Fridman (53:34.080)
And that what happens in work, in business,
Lex Fridman (53:37.120)
is that people conflate like,
Jason Calacanis (53:39.280)
oh, well, I went to work to make a living to pay my bills
Lex Fridman (53:43.000)
versus Michael Phelps approach to getting gold medals
Jason Calacanis (53:47.600)
or Michael Jordan or pick the person,
Lex Fridman (53:49.600)
Elon or Jeff Bezos.
Lex Fridman (53:50.840)
And when you look at the reviews of like a place like Amazon,
Lex Fridman (53:54.080)
there was this incredible story in the New York Times
Jason Calacanis (53:56.280)
where people were, I don't know if you remember it,
Lex Fridman (53:58.760)
this is the worst place you could ever work, Amazon.
Lex Fridman (54:01.400)
And we talked to 200 people and they all told us,
Lex Fridman (54:04.560)
they all described for us in the New York Times,
Jason Calacanis (54:07.080)
a culture of cutthroatness and brutality
Lex Fridman (54:10.120)
that has never before been seen.
Lex Fridman (54:11.840)
And then you see all these people who work for Bezos
Lex Fridman (54:13.800)
for 24 years from when they graduated
Jason Calacanis (54:16.360)
with their MBAs until today.
Lex Fridman (54:18.280)
And they've never left the company
Lex Fridman (54:19.880)
and they are ride or die forever.
Lex Fridman (54:23.520)
And what you're seeing there is,
Jason Calacanis (54:26.200)
there's a mismatch of people going to work
Lex Fridman (54:29.200)
in an extreme sport or an extreme endeavor
Jason Calacanis (54:32.720)
who should not do that.
Lex Fridman (54:34.280)
There are people who should go out into the rice fields
Lex Fridman (54:37.920)
and pick rice.
Lex Fridman (54:39.000)
And then there's another group of people who are samurai
Lex Fridman (54:42.400)
and who wield a sword and who take on missions
Lex Fridman (54:46.360)
that are dangerous.
Lex Fridman (54:48.240)
But if you're a rice picker and that's what you do
Lex Fridman (54:50.560)
and you feel safe, just getting a couple grains of rice,
Jason Calacanis (54:53.920)
put them in a basket, cleaning it and then whatever,
Lex Fridman (54:56.560)
that's valid work, no big deal.
Jason Calacanis (54:58.520)
I'm not deriding it, I'm sort of,
Lex Fridman (55:00.120)
but that is one group.
Lex Fridman (55:02.200)
And then there's people who are samurai
Lex Fridman (55:03.800)
and you cannot conflate the two,
Jason Calacanis (55:05.880)
you cannot compare the two.
Lex Fridman (55:07.960)
And that's what is happening right now in business.
Jason Calacanis (55:10.560)
Whenever you see these stories about,
Lex Fridman (55:12.160)
this person at this company is like a tyrant
Lex Fridman (55:14.640)
and they're so horrible and they yelled at somebody.
Lex Fridman (55:17.080)
Like if you're in the field
Lex Fridman (55:19.120)
and you're taking the beach at Normandy and it's D day
Lex Fridman (55:22.080)
or you gotta take the hill
Jason Calacanis (55:23.720)
or you gotta whack Osama bin Laden
Lex Fridman (55:25.640)
and you're the Navy SEALs and like a rudder,
Jason Calacanis (55:27.800)
a rotor gets knocked off the back of the Black Hawk,
Lex Fridman (55:31.320)
like this is serious shit.
Jason Calacanis (55:32.800)
Like don't do it if you're not serious.
Lex Fridman (55:35.360)
And if you're not serious about changing the world,
Lex Fridman (55:37.520)
why would you go work for Bezos?
Lex Fridman (55:39.320)
Why would you go work for Elon Musk?
Jason Calacanis (55:40.720)
Don't do it, don't go work there.
Lex Fridman (55:43.520)
This is, let me just sit back
Lex Fridman (55:46.080)
and enjoy the beauty of all of that.
Lex Fridman (55:49.800)
That's music to my ears,
Lex Fridman (55:50.840)
but I'm not sure what to do with it
Lex Fridman (55:52.480)
because it's conflicting to a lot of the things I hear
Jason Calacanis (55:57.600)
from the way you're supposed to kind of act.
Lex Fridman (56:00.080)
And I think in order to do great things,
Jason Calacanis (56:03.680)
you have to, I always admired people
Lex Fridman (56:06.720)
that lose their shit a little bit
Jason Calacanis (56:08.400)
because they're so passionate.
Lex Fridman (56:10.160)
And I apologize and all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (56:14.320)
but like there's a tension,
Lex Fridman (56:15.760)
there's a drama to the creative process
Jason Calacanis (56:18.600)
when especially in the early startup,
Lex Fridman (56:22.720)
this is not like the work life balance idea
Jason Calacanis (56:26.320)
doesn't even apply.
Lex Fridman (56:27.160)
Work life balance, it's ridiculous.
Jason Calacanis (56:28.680)
It's a ridiculous concept.
Lex Fridman (56:30.640)
Like the idea that there's like work life balance
Jason Calacanis (56:33.200)
in a startup is ridiculous.
Lex Fridman (56:34.480)
If you're looking for work life balance,
Jason Calacanis (56:36.560)
do not go to a startup or any kind of ambitious company.
Lex Fridman (56:39.600)
There is a series of places you can work in the world
Jason Calacanis (56:43.200)
where you do not need to do anything more
Lex Fridman (56:46.840)
than what's put in front of you.
Lex Fridman (56:48.320)
And you just put the round peg in the round hole
Lex Fridman (56:52.240)
and the square peg in the square hole and you go home.
Lex Fridman (56:55.600)
And you get your little bits and grains of rice
Lex Fridman (57:00.920)
and you go heat them up and eat them, that's it.
Lex Fridman (57:03.200)
And then there's this other thing,
Lex Fridman (57:04.280)
which is the extreme pursuit of changing the world
Lex Fridman (57:07.520)
and sacrificing.
Lex Fridman (57:09.000)
And we have a generation of people,
Jason Calacanis (57:11.160)
multi generations of people who are soft.
Lex Fridman (57:14.200)
They're just soft.
Jason Calacanis (57:15.040)
I mean, what is the big struggle we've had to deal with
Lex Fridman (57:17.720)
in America in our lifetimes?
Jason Calacanis (57:19.440)
Like 9 11 and we didn't have the Vietnam War
Lex Fridman (57:21.640)
and then we had this like weird Iraq Wars
Lex Fridman (57:23.400)
and Middle East Wars that were kind of like a small number
Lex Fridman (57:26.640)
of people went and we sent drones.
Jason Calacanis (57:27.920)
Like we have not had to sacrifice.
Lex Fridman (57:30.360)
Gen Xers, maybe the tail end of boomers
Jason Calacanis (57:33.240)
experienced the Vietnam War regrettably.
Lex Fridman (57:35.640)
But we've had a couple of generations now, three I guess,
Jason Calacanis (57:38.840)
that just haven't had to suffer.
Lex Fridman (57:40.600)
And so we're soft as Americans, we're soft.
Lex Fridman (57:42.680)
And then you look at people in China and we're like,
Lex Fridman (57:44.720)
oh my God, these poor Chinese people are living
Jason Calacanis (57:46.960)
in these tiny cramped apartments.
Lex Fridman (57:48.440)
Like they were living in like essentially lean twos
Jason Calacanis (57:52.600)
in Northern China with no running water
Lex Fridman (57:56.120)
or like one spigot of ice cold water for the entire village.
Jason Calacanis (57:58.480)
Like they're thrilled to be joining the middle class.
Lex Fridman (58:01.960)
Even if it's the bottom of the middle class, right?
Jason Calacanis (58:04.480)
They've taken hundreds of millions of people in China
Lex Fridman (58:06.400)
and moved them into the middle class.
Lex Fridman (58:08.560)
And we're like, oh my God, these people are suffering.
Lex Fridman (58:10.280)
It's like, they're up to $4 an hour,
Jason Calacanis (58:12.360)
three or $4 an hour in the factories there.
Lex Fridman (58:14.480)
And they were just two decades ago at,
Jason Calacanis (58:17.920)
I don't know, it was probably 50 cents an hour,
Lex Fridman (58:20.880)
something crazy like that.
Lex Fridman (58:22.360)
And now they've improved the quality of life there so much,
Lex Fridman (58:26.280)
just like America did 200 years ago or 100 years ago.
Jason Calacanis (58:28.960)
They've improved it so much in China
Lex Fridman (58:31.200)
that now they're getting outpriced for factories
Jason Calacanis (58:33.440)
from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India,
Lex Fridman (58:36.960)
and people are moving and people in China
Jason Calacanis (58:39.080)
are moving the factories out of China into other countries.
Lex Fridman (58:43.080)
Because the Chinese are now outsourcing to Vietnam
Lex Fridman (58:46.120)
and other countries.
Lex Fridman (58:46.960)
So this is the way of the world.
Jason Calacanis (58:48.840)
People move up and they get a better lot in life
Lex Fridman (58:51.080)
for their families.
Lex Fridman (58:51.920)
And just in America, we've gotten soft.
Lex Fridman (58:53.480)
And there's a generation.
Lex Fridman (58:55.400)
How do people die in America now?
Lex Fridman (58:57.040)
Suicide, obesity, heart attacks, anxiety.
Jason Calacanis (59:01.400)
I mean, we're suffering from things
Lex Fridman (59:04.160)
that if you told people 100 years ago
Jason Calacanis (59:05.920)
that the number, the top ways Americans would die
Lex Fridman (59:09.200)
would be overeating and suicide,
Lex Fridman (59:11.840)
they'd be like, what?
Lex Fridman (59:13.520)
You're literally killing yourself
Lex Fridman (59:14.640)
or eating yourself to death?
Lex Fridman (59:15.600)
That's what's happening in America?
Lex Fridman (59:16.960)
And when everybody, not everybody en masse,
Lex Fridman (59:20.480)
there's a large number of people
Jason Calacanis (59:21.640)
who have become softer and softer.
Lex Fridman (59:23.920)
Capitalism creates an environment
Jason Calacanis (59:25.480)
where there is people that still step up amidst that
Lex Fridman (59:28.360)
with a big dream and challenge the conventions.
Lex Fridman (59:31.400)
And that human spirit just arise above that.
Lex Fridman (59:33.560)
Elon's example of that, Jeff Bezos's example of that.
Jason Calacanis (59:36.320)
Countless, countless examples.
Lex Fridman (59:37.640)
And they push the limits of those,
Jason Calacanis (59:42.520)
of human beings that are willing to step up.
Lex Fridman (59:45.240)
And I think about sort of how to create a company
Jason Calacanis (59:49.840)
that amidst all of this softness
Lex Fridman (59:54.200)
still creates a revolution.
Jason Calacanis (59:56.080)
It's not, it doesn't seem trivial.
Lex Fridman (59:58.440)
It seems like how do you build a culture
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