Latest / Masters in Business / Max Chafkin on the Social Good of Tech Companies (Podcast)

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Max Chafkin on the Social Good of Tech Companies (Podcast) · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: This is Mesters in Business with Very Results on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 1: Here this week on the podcast, my special guest is
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  Speaker 1: Max Chafkin. He is a journalist and a reporter and
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  Speaker 1: writer and has a new book out all about Peter
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  Speaker 1: Teel and Silicon Valley. It's quite fascinating. The book is
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  Speaker 1: called The Contrarian. Previously, I interviewed Ryan Holliday about his
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  Speaker 1: book on Peter Teel funding the Whole Hogan litigation against Hawker.
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  Speaker 1: That book was called Conspiracy. This book is really less
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  Speaker 1: focused on any single event and more of a deep
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  Speaker 1: dive into uh the life and times of Peter Teel.
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  Speaker 1: He's a fascinating character and the book is really quite
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  Speaker 1: quite interesting. I found the book intriguing, and I found
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  Speaker 1: my conversation with Max fascinating, and I think you will
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  Speaker 1: also so, with no further ado, my interview with Business
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  Speaker 1: Weeks Max Chafkin. This is Masters in Business with Very
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  Speaker 1: Results on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Max Chafkin. He is a features editor and tech reporter
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  Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Business Week. His work has also appeared in
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  Speaker 1: such August magazines as Fast Company, vamany Fair, The New
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  Speaker 1: York Times, magazine. He is the author of a fascinating
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  Speaker 1: new book, The Contrarian Peter Teel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit
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  Speaker 1: of Power. Normally here I say, guest, welcome to Bloomberg,
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  Speaker 1: but since you work here, I'm gonna say Max, welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Masters in Business. Thanks for having me, Barry, it's
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  Speaker 1: a pleasure to be here. Uh. And I have to say,
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  Speaker 1: this is a fascinating topic about a really interesting, eclectic
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  Speaker 1: person that even though there's been a decent amount written
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  Speaker 1: about him before this, there wasn't as much of a
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  Speaker 1: deep dive into his life. So so we're gonna get
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  Speaker 1: to that in a few minutes. Before we do, let's
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  Speaker 1: just start with your background. How did you get into journalism?
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  Speaker 1: What attracted you to this? Yeah, so my first job
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  Speaker 1: in journalism was at a magazine called Ink, which is
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  Speaker 1: a short business magazine. You know, I, I don't know.
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  Speaker 1: I was interested in Uh. I was interested in getting
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  Speaker 1: a job in journalism. And this is going back sixteen
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  Speaker 1: seventeen years ago. Um, and my father had worked in
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  Speaker 1: business his whole career. I've sort of been interested in
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  Speaker 1: in business and and any idea that like the store,
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  Speaker 1: the sort of business stories have something to say about,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the real world. Um. You know, I read
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  Speaker 1: Moneyball and you know, uh and the Michael Lewis book
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  Speaker 1: about the the the Oakland A's and and kind of
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the sort of business story behind the Oakland is being
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  Speaker 1: good at baseball. Anyway, I got this job at INC Magazine,
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  Speaker 1: small business magazine, and that was kind of how I
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  Speaker 1: got into it. And I the way I got into
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  Speaker 1: covering tech was, you know, back then tech was kind
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  Speaker 1: of this side show um and and I was like
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  Speaker 1: the young reporter. Uh So they kind of just let
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  Speaker 1: me like do whatever I wanted in terms of of
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  Speaker 1: of covering the tech companies because first of all, the
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  Speaker 1: basic view was that it wasn't very important and that
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  Speaker 1: you know. So so anyway, I got to encounter a
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  Speaker 1: lot of these folks, you know, including um teal you know,
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  Speaker 1: relatively early uh and got to kind of see watch this.
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  Speaker 1: You know. Obviously it's not the entire um. I didn't
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  Speaker 1: get to witness the entire evolution of silicon valid, but
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  Speaker 1: I got to see a really important part, you know,
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  Speaker 1: going from from that time two thousand five to today,
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  Speaker 1: where you know, the tech industry went from being kind
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  Speaker 1: of an economic side show where you know, back at
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  Speaker 1: my job at INC. You know, I had this more
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  Speaker 1: serve of senior writers telling me to you know, these
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  Speaker 1: companies are all stupid and um and they're all you know,
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  Speaker 1: they're losing money. And I went from being this kind
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  Speaker 1: of important but but really a side show to being
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  Speaker 1: you know, i'd argue, you know, the most important you know,
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  Speaker 1: economic engine in the United States, maybe even the world, um,
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  Speaker 1: you know, really important, maybe the most important cultural center,
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  Speaker 1: and I think increasingly, um you know, really the important
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  Speaker 1: political uh center of gravity. So it's it's amazing that
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  Speaker 1: people who witnessed the nineteen nineties so easily drew the
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  Speaker 1: wrong lesson, which is oh, a lot of these worthless
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  Speaker 1: the list companies have no revenue, no profits, they're worthless.
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  Speaker 1: But you can always pick those out. You have to
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  Speaker 1: look at the broader trend. And clearly in the nineties
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  Speaker 1: this isn't hindsight. Technology was changing everything. You didn't have
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  Speaker 1: to be a genius to figure that out, although you
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  Speaker 1: could see how people might miss it because of so
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  Speaker 1: many of the negative stories. Yeah. Yeah, And it's funny
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  Speaker 1: that the people who kind of who who thrived in
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  Speaker 1: the in that early period, including Peter Thiel, but also
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  Speaker 1: many others. You know, we're the we're the kind of
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  Speaker 1: contrarians who set who are arguing back then, actually, uh,
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  Speaker 1: the dot com boom was great, and we built all
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  Speaker 1: this infrastructure and and you heard these arguments back then
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  Speaker 1: that that we're mostly um dismissed. But but yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: mean now in retrospect, right, it looks like, um, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they basically had it right, but then a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: there was a bunch of like sort of dumb money
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  Speaker 1: that that that got dumped into the industry and and
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  Speaker 1: kind of the party they pick up the drinks for
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  Speaker 1: everybody else. Listen. I've talked about this with other technologists
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  Speaker 1: and vcs. Before Global crossing and Metromedia, fiber and all
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  Speaker 1: that stuff that blew up. It got brought out of
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  Speaker 1: bankruptcy for pennies on the dollar, and that's how you
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  Speaker 1: ended up with the YouTube's and netflix is and uh
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  Speaker 1: facebooks of the world. But for that it wouldn't happen.
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  Speaker 1: So we're in a total agreement on technology. Let me
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  Speaker 1: ask you, do you recall the first time you met
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  Speaker 1: Peter tile tell us a little bit. So I was
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: trying to think about this and I think it was, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: it's either two thousand seven or two thousand eight. So
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  Speaker 1: I was writing a story about Elon Musk. You know,
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  Speaker 1: Elon Musk at the time was kind of famous, but
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  Speaker 1: not that famous. He had started a company UM during
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  Speaker 1: the dot com boom that had um that had been
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  Speaker 1: sold for like three million bucks. He had been he
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  Speaker 1: was like one of the early kind of like dot
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  Speaker 1: Colm kids, and that's when he first encountered Teal. They
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  Speaker 1: met one another at PayPal and and they had this
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  Speaker 1: kind of very difficult kind of the relationship. They're like
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  Speaker 1: friend of these or something, and we can get into that,
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  Speaker 1: but any case, I was doing a story about musk
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  Speaker 1: Um who was distinguishing himself at the time because he
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  Speaker 1: was involved in company Tesla that you know, nobody was
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  Speaker 1: taking seriously because they were trying to make an electric
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  Speaker 1: sports car, which kind of seems like they were taking
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: these um I'm trying to remember with the cars, right,
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  Speaker 1: They're taking these Lotus Alon mules, pulling out all the engines,
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  Speaker 1: putting in batteries and laptop batteries, and you know, nobody
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  Speaker 1: thought they were a serious point. Yeah, it was a
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  Speaker 1: hobbyist project essentially that he was trying to turn into
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  Speaker 1: something much bigger. And he also had this crazy rocket
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  Speaker 1: thing and and and that's when I talked to Teal
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  Speaker 1: I for the first time. Was just like a very
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  Speaker 1: quick interview about you know, what's up with this guy
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  Speaker 1: Elon musk uh and um and and I counted him,
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  Speaker 1: I guess basically a handful of times, you know, in
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  Speaker 1: the years that follows. The funny thing about him, So
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  Speaker 1: most people in Silicon Valley know who Peter Teal is.
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  Speaker 1: But I think most Americans and even a lot of
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  Speaker 1: people like who are who are involved in business like
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  Speaker 1: are not super aware of him because he was this
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  Speaker 1: like behind the scenes player. He was not not the
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  Speaker 1: front man, not the guy he only ran he he
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  Speaker 1: was the CEO of PayPal. But it was a pretty
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  Speaker 1: short tenure, just a couple of years. They got booked
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  Speaker 1: by eBay pretty early on, and he left like the
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  Speaker 1: day that um, you know, the day that Meg Whitman,
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  Speaker 1: you know, took the keys, uh, Teal was out the
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  Speaker 1: door and um. And so he had this kind of
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  Speaker 1: behind the scenes thing where where he was sort of secretly,
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  Speaker 1: you know, this really influential guy. You know, there's this
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  Speaker 1: sense in Silicon Valley especially you know in that period
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  Speaker 1: from like two thousand five to sixteen where you know
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  Speaker 1: kind of you know the game, you know, six Degrees
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  Speaker 1: of Kevin Bacon or something. But like every startup, one
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  Speaker 1: way or another pretty quickly comes back to Teal. And
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  Speaker 1: the way it came back to him was through this
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  Speaker 1: thing called the PayPal Mafia, which probably a lot of
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  Speaker 1: people have heard of, but I'll just summarize real quick.
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  Speaker 1: It was basically just these this gang of folks who
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  Speaker 1: had been involved in the early years of PayPal. They
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  Speaker 1: were all sort of working together um and making investments
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  Speaker 1: early on, including in um Facebook, but also you know
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  Speaker 1: LinkedIn the Reid Hoffman was Red Hoffman, Ela mus Peter Teal,
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  Speaker 1: who else was in the PayPal mass So the the
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  Speaker 1: YouTube founders are are members of the PayPal mafia. You
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  Speaker 1: also had a couple of vcs were not super well known,
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  Speaker 1: but a pretty important one is Keith R. Boy, who's
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  Speaker 1: been involved in you know, some of Jack Dorsey's Square,
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  Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey's company were Boy I think was was an
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  Speaker 1: executive there and as you know, has kind of been
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  Speaker 1: in the fintech world, uh in a big way over
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  Speaker 1: the last decade. Uh David Sacks another UM kind of
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  Speaker 1: well known venture capitalist. UM. You had who am I forgetting? Oh,
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  Speaker 1: the founders of yelp. Uh. So it's like, uh Max
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  Speaker 1: Levchin who started a firm which is this, you know,
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  Speaker 1: another kind of fintech thing that I think they went
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  Speaker 1: public within the last year. She had these guys who
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  Speaker 1: were all UM, really successful, really smart. UM. We're very much,
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  Speaker 1: very similar, kind of a lot of ideological enlignment. And
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  Speaker 1: there there are some exceptions. You know, Teal and Musk
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  Speaker 1: disagree with each other and a lot of things, but
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  Speaker 1: for the most part, UM, these guys are really into
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  Speaker 1: you know, the future and and and sort of the
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  Speaker 1: possibilities that are created by technology. Many of them very conservative.
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  Speaker 1: You know, Teal comes out of this kind of politically
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  Speaker 1: activist background. A lot of the early PayPal mafia guys.
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  Speaker 1: UM worked for this newspaper that that Peter Teel started
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  Speaker 1: at Stanford, the Stanford Review. UM. So it's this kind
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  Speaker 1: of ideological venture capital network where they're investing each other's companies.
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  Speaker 1: You have UM employees who bounced from you know, one
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  Speaker 1: company to the next to the next. If you want
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to like make your career in silicon Valley. You know,
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  Speaker 1: one way to do it, it's not the only way
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  Speaker 1: is to kind of get in with this with this
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  Speaker 1: group of people. Tell tell us about I love this phrase,
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  Speaker 1: the cult of disruption. So that's kind of the cool thing.
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  Speaker 1: What was attractive to me about, you know, writing about
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  Speaker 1: Teal and about the book, is that tel his influence.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, he has the money, the kind of conventional
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  Speaker 1: he he was an investor in the first outside investor
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  Speaker 1: in Facebook, co founder palanteer Co, you know, co founder
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  Speaker 1: PayPal um. But then there's this ideological thing where where
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  Speaker 1: Teal is kind of different from a lot of these
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  Speaker 1: other guys, and that he had a very clear sort
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  Speaker 1: of idea and that ability to articulate, um, you know,
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  Speaker 1: a vision for technology and and for for politics, and
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  Speaker 1: and that idea, which is probably best you know, kind
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  Speaker 1: of laid out in Teal's book zero to one, but
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  Speaker 1: which you can find you know, on YouTube videos and
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  Speaker 1: things like that, is more or less that technology companies
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  Speaker 1: are you know, the best hope for the future. Um.
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  Speaker 1: They are. There are the things they're gonna make the
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  Speaker 1: future happen. They're going to save the world. Um. And
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  Speaker 1: that the way that technology companies can thrive or are
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  Speaker 1: will will do best is if they try to get
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  Speaker 1: you know, basically as big as they can, as fast
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  Speaker 1: as they can, and if they are constantly trying to
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  Speaker 1: overturn norms and and in other words, now, in this view, right, um,
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  Speaker 1: it's really important to to sort of break with the herd.
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  Speaker 1: And so it's not just that if you're a startup
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  Speaker 1: it's good to sort of break the rules. It's it's
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  Speaker 1: okay to break the rules. That's that's not what this says.
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  Speaker 1: What Teal thinks is that breaking the rules and kind
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  Speaker 1: of changing um norms, changing perceptions even yeah, like even
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  Speaker 1: getting into a little bit of trouble is a social good.
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of how progress happens. And we see
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  Speaker 1: that with Facebook, right the Facebook model motto was you know,
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  Speaker 1: move fast and break things, right like the idea of disruption.
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  Speaker 1: We normally, I think, conventionally have thought of disruption as
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  Speaker 1: being like, you know, bad thing you don't you get,
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  Speaker 1: the thing you yell your kids at for um. But
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  Speaker 1: but but Teel kind of rebranded it as as a
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  Speaker 1: as a social good, as something to be proud of,
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  Speaker 1: and kind of folds it gets folded into this sort
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  Speaker 1: of imperial capitalism, which again I think we see, you know,
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  Speaker 1: most clearly with Facebook, where the company just is this
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  Speaker 1: gigantic company swallowing competitors trying to get huge, you know,
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  Speaker 1: getting enormous and and um, and then you know, attempting
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  Speaker 1: to just sort of dominate. And so that view of
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  Speaker 1: technology as both rule breaking and kind of monopolistic that
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  Speaker 1: comes from from Peter Teel. And of course it's not
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  Speaker 1: a totally uh, you know, it's a controversial vision, right
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  Speaker 1: because like I'm not sure we want to have these
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  Speaker 1: giant tech monopolies or or you know, obviously, once once
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  Speaker 1: companies like Facebook get as big as they are, um,
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  Speaker 1: then that that propensity for rule breaking um becomes you know,
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  Speaker 1: a potential problem. So he comes out of the PayPal
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  Speaker 1: mafia having sold the company, uh to eBay, which eventually
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  Speaker 1: gets run by Meg Whitman. I don't remember if she
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: was CEO doing the purchase. Was it was she was, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and they had a rivalry and yeah, tell us about
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: because you would think she like Meg Whitman. Meg Whitman
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: is not exactly the sort of person you think is
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  Speaker 1: prickly and gonna be getting two spats with people. How
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  Speaker 1: did this become some sort of uh A challenged relationship.
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  Speaker 1: So with Teal, right, there's always a kind of a
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  Speaker 1: business dimension and an ideological dimension. Business dimension. Um. PayPal
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: was growing quickly and in some ways is was a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: threat to eBay because like, if all the transactions are
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: happening in PayPal, that that's gonna you know, could conceivably
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: hurt eBay in the in the long run. Um. But
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: but of course eBay has a lot of power over
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: PayPal because at any point eBay could just try to
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  Speaker 1: shut it off. eBay had a competing payment service at
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the time, So there's this kind of tension that you
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: often see in in in these tech businesses where you
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: have a platform and then a company that's kind of
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: ascendant within that platform. So that was going on. But
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: but but of course there's a there's another dimension, which
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: is that Whitman was kind of a conventional business figure.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Right she I can't remember if she I think she
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: has an m b A. Her her big um success
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  Speaker 1: before that was at Hasbro. She's not a technologist, right,
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  Speaker 1: She's somebody who's kind of like a normal business as
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Teal and his his peer sought, you know, kind of
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  Speaker 1: a square, and they saw themselves as being you know,
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  Speaker 1: the rebels. You know, they had been they had been
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  Speaker 1: involved in this conservative newspaper at Stanford was all about
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: kind of sticking it in the eye of the establishment.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And and women of course is not a politically you know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: not that far away you know from Teal, she's kind
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: of center right or whatever. Um. But but you know
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  Speaker 1: they are just but they just totally different sort of personality,
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  Speaker 1: generational viewpoints. They want you know, Teal and and his
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: and his crew like they're really invested in the idea
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: of kind of overturning you know, everything about you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Meg Whitman's world, the world of m b A's and
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: you know kind of normal Wall Street finance and um
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and you know, kind of normal business practice. They they
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: thought they were you know, uh, you know, getting rid
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of all that or revolutionizing all of that. And the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: fact that they you know, they kind of succeeded, right
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: they went public eventually they did sell themselves to eBay.
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  Speaker 1: But but but that that success us um, you know,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: then becomes one of the founding myths of Silicon Valley,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: where you see that same attitude, you know, we are
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: different from those guys on the East Coast that you
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: know nowadays they talk about the paper belt, right, the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: East Coast establishment, the media, the finance world. That's the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: paper belt. We're getting like the rust belt, we're getting
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: rid of them. Where this new thing and that becomes
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: kind of the one of as I said, like you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the founding myth, the founding ideology that that kind of
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: helps propel Facebook and Uber and many of these other companies,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: uh to to their amazing height. So we're gonna get
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: to Facebook. I want to stick to this sort of
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: rivalry he has not only with Meg Whitman, but with
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a fame VC Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital. He's a
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: California VC guy. He's not part of the rust belt.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Paper belt. Why did they butt heads? Yeah, well so
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: more it's at the time is and was you know,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: one of the most famous legend legend right. You know,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: he had a close relationship with Steve Jobs when he
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: was a journalist. I had written this book about Apple
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and then had gone on to become an investor invested
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: in Google. Um more, it's uh so there were there
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: actually there were so many payments companies back then. Um
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  Speaker 1: And that's that's a thing that we've sort of all
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: kind of forgot. Right. You just think PayPal, Wow, what
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: a what a revolutionary idea, But it wasn't really a
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: revolutionary idea. There were, you know, like dozens of these things.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Every every major tech firm had a payments thing, every
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: bank had a payments thing. And there are a bunch
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of independent startups, one of which was started by Elon Musk,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: which called x dot com, and Mike Morritz was his investor.
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  Speaker 1: More it's um had and I think has a kind
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: of a more conventional view of what a startup is
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and what a Silicon Valley founder is supposed to be
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: like than than Peter Teal. And so part of what
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: happened is that, you know, the two companies merged, Musk
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: became CEO and Teal basically got bounced out. And six
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: months after that, Musk goes on his honeymoon. UM and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: while he's away, uh Teal and some of the his
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: friends who who had who had started the company with
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: him basically engineer a coup. They marched to Mike Moritz's
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: office on Sandhill Road and they present him with letters
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: of resignation for you know, most of the executive team
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and say, you know you gotta you gotta fire everybody
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and replace. You gotta fire sorry, you gotta fire Elon
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: musk Um and bring in Peter or we're all gonna
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: walk and more. It's Um agrees because basically had no choice.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: But of course that creates some some some I think
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: bad blood, and then there's there's like a further h
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: amount of bad blood where Teal Um. You know, people
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: think of Teal as this sort of Silicon Valley guy
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: as being you know, you know, big visionary, but he
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: his his involvement with PayPal originally was as an investor.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: He had started a hedge fund and he kind of
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: approached the management of the company like a hedge fund guy.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So he he almost the entire time he's running PayPal,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: he was trying to sell he he he recognized that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the company was on uncertain footing, they were losing money,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it had a lot value. He wanted to sell a company.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Morrits did not, because, of course, for a venture capitalist,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: once you have a hit, you really don't want to
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: You don't want to sell early because your entire portfolio
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: is kind of dependent on that hit, you know, going
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: as big as possible So that was the second way
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: that they butted heads, where where more it's you know,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: kind of comes to Seatial as this as as an operator,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: not not as a real entrepreneur. And til Um sees
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: more it's as basically a sharp elbowed guy who's just
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: trying to get his and and and and that becomes
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a conflict that helps set up um teal later in
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: his career because when Tel started a venture capital fund,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: his the Founders Fund, the whole idea is like, we're
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: different from uh, the Sequoia way. You know, Mike Morritts
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: will fire founders, he'll you know, he doesn't let founders
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: you know, run the company. Um. This is not an
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: entirely fair critique, although they're especially given that he himself
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: orchestrated the firing y Elon Musk from Elan Musk's company.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: But but as they saw it, you know Moretz was
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: kind of and the kind of Sequoia way was about
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: preserving sequoias, you know, internal rate of return. It wasn't
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: about you know, helping the entrepreneur. Um and and they
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: were going to be different and the and the founders
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: fund approach, which again they really marketed as like the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: opposite of Sequoia, which at the time was and still is,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the big venture capital firms, as like,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: we are gonna We're gonna let you do what you want.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: You know, it's your company. We will never fire a
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: founder um and and hence founders fund, hence founders fund,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and hence you know, Mark Zuckerberg ending up as like,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you know, the absolute dictator of this like a trillion
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: dollar company, Facebook, with the A shares that he has
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a vastly disproportion of voting share, he really can't be
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: deposed without his own permission. And and as long as
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you're bringing up, um, Facebook and Zuck Teal was one
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of the very first investors into Facebook, wasn't yeah yeah,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: first outside investor. I mean he he came in at
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the same time as Reid Hoffman, who's another one of
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: his buddies. Um, but you know he he made a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: big the first significant investment in Facebook five dollars. If
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: you've watched The Social network, um he there's a scene
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: where Sean Parker, the Shawn Parker character played by Justin
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: timber Leg and Jesse Eisenberg playing Mark Zuckerberg meet with
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: this kind of suit VC who tells them to like, um,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you know, change the company structure to fire the other
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: guy at Wardo Savern. And that is Peter Teal. I mean,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that's that that that character who just appears for about
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: you know, fifteen seconds is Teal because Teal was this
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: was the outside money, and Teal helps set in motion
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: this chain chain of events that allowed Suckerberg to restructure
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: the company so that he would be you know, in control,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: not just in control then, but you know, in control today.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about Teal the investor
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and tell the businessman. He's pretty obviously a fascinating and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: complex character, but he very much she as a contrarian
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: from whence does this streak? I mean, there's a pretty
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: clear path in Silicon Valley to how to succeed as
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: an entrepreneur, how to succeed as a venture capitalist. Uh,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: that wasn't anything that was in need of reinventment, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: yet he very much reinvent vented both of those fields.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Why what motivated Yeah? So, I mean you can go
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: way back. I mean he so his basic idea you
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: said contrarianism, right, but and it' and it's it's really
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that you know, the majority is often wrong. That's his
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: idea that like, when when you have these things that
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: we as a society have agreed on, um a lot
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: of the time, we're we're we're making those assumptions, are
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: making those decisions based on sort of faulty assumptions where
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: we're agreeing with things because we want to make our
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: our friends, neighbors and colleagues happy. And Heal thinks we
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: make mistakes that way. Um that comes you know, I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: think you go way back. You know, he was bullied
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: as a child. You know, he bounced around a lot.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I think I think he was always kind of him
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: against the world as a kid. Um. But also it
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: goes to this you know philosophy, French philosopher that he's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: really into Rhune Gerard Um who you know basically articulated
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: a uh you know, a sort of philosophical version of
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: of contrarianism that that Teal has really brought into. And
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: what's interesting, So I think, you know the Teal approach.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: You can you obviously see why it's useful um in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in in the world as a technology investor, because vcs
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: make these high risk, you know, high reward bets and
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: so you don't really want to bet on the consensus. Right,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it's a there's low upside um. Uh. But also you know,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Teal thinks it's more than that, right, Teal thinks this
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: is like a potential life philosophy, and and that that
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: sort of um finding areas of disagreement. He you know,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in in um in job interviews, he he he asked people,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you know, what is the thing that you believe that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: no one else believes? Right, He's like really interested in
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: in in kind of breaking the norm and and and
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it's interested in this as as a life philosophy. The
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: funny thing is right for somebody is all about you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: being different. Um. And I think this is related. A
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: lot of what he's done is actually like sort of
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: sell into bubbles rather than betting. He doesn't all he
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: you know, he sometimes has bet against bubbles, especially when
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: he was running his hedge fund in the in the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: two thousand's, But but often it's more like he sees
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: something that's hot and he figures out a way to
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to make a play. So that was so PayPal was
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: certainly one of those where there's this huge boom and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Teal was an outsider and he kind of you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: finds his way to this brilliant coder, Max leve Chin
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and and and you know the rest of history. Same
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: thing with Palanteer. We're Palanteers this now today, you know,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: government contract or, big data mining firm. And it really
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: grew out of um Tel's insight, you know, after not
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: eleven that Silicon Valley has something to sell the US
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: government because the US government was really interested in data
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: mining doing a better job of kind of we have
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: all this information, we have aldest surveillance, thousands and thousands
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of hours of audio that we've picked up from the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: field that's potentially dangerous. What the hell do we do
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: with it? Yeah, And Palanteer was more or less just yeah,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you know an elevator pitch too that that was like
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: directly aimed at that. And it took them, you know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a decade or so to kind of actually find a business.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: But so it's in a way Teal is good at
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: at at at like spotting these trends and and and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: sort of seeing the ways that the herd is moving
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and then finding ways to maneuver so that he can
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: he can profit from from that movement. And I think
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the the sort of Trump thing is another would be
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: another instance of that where Teal was really early. UM. Now,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: now of course we could talk about the ethics and
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: morality or whatever of this, but but just from a
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: sort of cold calculation, Teal was very early in in
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: in seeing that there was movement against kind of globalization,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: that there was the rise of this um really you know,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: hardcore right wing, especially on the Internet. And and you know,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: he saw Trump before many many other people. UM. Realized
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: that that this was happening and that it was real,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and and then that and that allowed him, you know,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: to get in early on Trump. So so let's combine
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the conversation of out of Facebook and the conversation about
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Trump with the deal you talk about the secret deal
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that was cut before the election. UM. Whereas a lot
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: of people on the writer complaining that the tech world
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: is biased against them and there's a liberal bias in
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: reality that wasn't what was taking place behind the scenes
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: about that, and I think people so you know, there's
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: on the right over the last um, you know, five
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: to ten years, UM, there's been a realization that first
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of all, Silicon Valley is very powerful, UM, which is true,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: and that a lot of liberal people work at these
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: tech companies, which is also true. And so what they've
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: done is kind of um taking the playbook that has
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: often used against the media companies. Yeah, they're working the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: refs exactly right. And and so that pressure has been
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: coming for a long time. It really it bubbled up
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: in a big way before the election. Um. You know,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: there was this sort mini scandal. I talked about this
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: in the book. There was like a mini scandal involving
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Facebook trying to kind of promote stories that the New
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: York Times and CNN and such we're publishing, um and
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and and Zuckerberg basically had to um have a piece
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: summit with with all these you know, key members of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the right wing media establishment. Teal was a sort of
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: broker there where where Zuckerberg said, look, I want to
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: hear you guys, we are going to be unbiased, um
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and and and over the next you know, five years.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Teal plays this role where when Facebook is under fire
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: either from the right wing press UM or from Trump UM,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Teal is there to kind of help Zuckerberg navigate navigate
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: that world. So and and and the most important thing is,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: you know, anytime Zuckerberg is accused of being a you know,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: a liberal shill or whatever because he was because he
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: was in favor of increased immigration. You know, he started
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: this pro immigration group. You know, Zuckerberg can say, look
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: look at my look at this guy on my board member.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: He's the longest serving board member. He's one of you know,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: one of my clothes friends. He's not just a he's
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: not a rhino. He's not just a Republican. He is
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a hardcore Steve Bannon, Donald Trump republican. He has real
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: credibility with with Trump world. And that was like the
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: most important thing I think that that Peter Thiel gave Facebook,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: which is like allowing it to be somewhat insulated from
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: attacks from Donald Trump. Now, in twenty nine, um Trump
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: and his campaign were running these ads where they were
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: kind of like they were really crossing the line factually right.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: They were claiming they were sort of making stuff up
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: about UM, about Hunter Biden. There were these videos of
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi that had clearly been doctor to make it
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: look like she you know, had some yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: some kind of neurological problem. UM. And there was like
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: real energy on the left to to do something about this.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: You had Elizabeth Warren and AOC saying, you know, Facebook
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: is out of control. Um And and Zuckerberg, you know,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: flies to Washington, d C. This is right when he
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: was um uh promoting Libra, you know, which is another
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: kind of crypto crypto thing. That is, because you've you've
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: already trusted Facebook with all your private data, you might
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: as well trust them with your cryptocon So he gives
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: this speech at Georgetown UM where he basically says, we're
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: not going to regulate political speech. Politicians can lie. It's
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: okay because you know that's that is. It is not
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: our job as as a private company to do that.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And you know the truth will out right and now
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that okay. So that that was the That was the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: That was kind of an explanation and a defense. And
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I would argue a kind of signaling of of intention.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Um And then he uh, you know, later on in
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: this trip, has a meeting with um you know, Donald Trump,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: uh and and Melania and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and um And and him and his wife Priscilla Chan
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and Peter teel And and Peter Chiel's husband, um And
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: in that meeting, you know, we don't know what the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: details of that meeting are UM. But but you know,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: after the meeting, to expressed to a friend that there
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: was an understanding and I, as I reported in the book,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: there's an understanding reach that Zuckerberg would basically continue to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: take a hands off approach on UM, you know, on
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: on on things that Trump said was going to give
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Trump a lot of leeway, which is something Trump really wanted,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: UM and was going to you know, basically do what
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: he could to ensure that you know, conservative media didn't
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: get you know, sideline at conservative media would thrive you know,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: on Facebook. But they went much further than that, because
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: when you look at the most shared stories the top ten,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: it's done supposedly for for technology liberals shutting down conservative voices.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Facebook is dominated by people like Ben Shapiro and Dan
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Bongino and all these like not just right wing conservatives,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: far right extremist groups. Uh. The algorithm seems to have
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: been set up to maximize outrage. Facebook is an outrage
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: manufacturing machine and that played right into this group's hands.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Percent Now and and the phrase that was used in
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: this conversation that I reported and was state sanctioned conservatism.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: The idea that Facebook would you know, basically promote these
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: guys Ben Shapiro, Bongino and so on. Now the thing
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: is okay, so Facebook, we have to say, first of all, um,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Facebook denies this. Um, the top ten, top twenty every
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: day is not debatable, right, a wild, wild disparrett you
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: would think for a country that's pretty evenly split, if anything,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Republicans are a minority, Conservatives are a minority. They dominate Facebook.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: How do you explain that? Well, I think so, I
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: think it's it. It is a handful of things, like
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: one of which is ideological and and and to the
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: extent to which Zuckerberg I think was has been pushed
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to the right by Peter Teal and and you saw
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: reporting by Bloomberg and E and others um during that
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: time where you had folks like Shapiro, you know, running
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: a foul of Facebook's rules, and Facebook stepping in to say,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah exactly, trying to trying to make sure
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: that these important voices, um, you know, as Facebook saw
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: it didn't get silence. You know. The other thing is money.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: And I think like a lot of a lot of
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: people have spent a lot of time, including me, trying
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to figure out, okay, like what is Mark Zuckerberg really
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: believe It's an important question because you know, Mark Zuckerberg
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: has you know, as much power as like arguably anybody
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: in human history. Um. And it's like not clear what
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: he believes. It's kind of seems like to me like
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: he just believes in Facebook and like in Facebook's bottom
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: line and and these guys, you know, Shapiro Bongino, Um,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: they are very good for Facebook's bottom line and and
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and like having this you know rabid um you know
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: outrage cycle. Of course is is is great news for Facebook.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: And and so I think I think that's part of
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: it as well. And I think a third component is
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: probably you know, failure on the left to to to
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: kind of come up with any any kind of answer
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: to this stuff. I mean probably part of the problem
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: is and again I'm just kind of speculating, but you know,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the mainstream left really embraced Facebook a lot of the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: stuff back in like two thousand eight, A lot of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the sort of stuff that Trump was doing, um in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: sen in terms of like this like really specific targeting
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: on Facebook, and you know that stuff was kind of
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: pioneered by Barack Obama and the and the and the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: kind of group of tech workers who were pulled from
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Google and had very specific but it wasn't on a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: platform like Facebook. It was broad internet based, very targeted.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: He was very successful in that, and the left I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: think they got a little cocky and ignored social media, thinking, hey,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: we got this whole Google se o thing well, and
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I think so. I think that was part of it.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: But I also think that because the mainstream left like
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: embraced Zuckerberg and embraced Facebook, I think that may have
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: sidelined the kind of far like they're basically like the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: mainstream is always gonna be lamer than the than the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: crazy people, like in Facebook world, and so what you
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: really had was like on Facebook, you had the kind
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: of mainstream left are doing with the crazy right, and
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: when that's happening, like the crazy people are always going
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to be more interesting, like you know, like these these
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: like kind of center left people, like the Obama types
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: are just gonna be like, you know, not as fun
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: as Dan Bongino, who is you know, you know, obviously
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: as you say, he's an extreme character, but he is
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: a character, right, He's entertaining and he generates outrage. And
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I think that also kind of perpetuated this kind of
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: outrage cycle that allowed you know, Republicans to um and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and because not just Republicans, sorry, I mean far right
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: you know, conservatives to to to you know, make such
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: hay with Facebook. I mean, I think the alt right
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: was really and and the alt right I think propelled
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Trump was it was a social media phenomenon. And they
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: saw that, and and Tile saw that, and and that's
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: part of the reason, you know, he was supportive of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that world. So let me ask you a question that's
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: impossible to answer, but I'm gonna throw it out anyway.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Would Donald Trump have gotten elected without the support of
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: pure teal? And what I mean by Teal is him
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and all of the people he worked with and works with,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: including Facebook, Zuckerberg, etcetera. Uh, can can Trump thanked Heal
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: for his victories? I think if you include, if you
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: throw in the like y network, I think the answer
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: is a percent. Yes. I mean Trump has said like
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think I would have gotten elected without social media. Um.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: But uh, but I think if we narrow it right
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: just to Teal, Um, I think Teal had a big impact.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if you can say, you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's it's always hard to say like one
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: to to narrow it down to one person, but um,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: you know, talked to people in who had been involved
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: at the Trump campaign and Teal was very valuable to them.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: And the reason he was valuable is because you know,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Trump obviously had a lot of energy. There's a lot
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: of kind of um you know, grassroots type support, a lot.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: He had a lot of fans. He's a celebrity, but
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: he hadn't attracted kind of the sort of establishment credibility
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: like real businessman if you think back and business people, Um,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: if you think back to the UM, the r N C,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: R and C, like who else spoke. Besides, it was
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: a surprisingly weak conference considering the winner of the election. Yeah,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I mean you had like Chachi from Happy Days. You
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: had like a bunch of guys, a bunch of real
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: estate guys, like a bunch of whom are now indicted
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: or you know, I have like seriously, but that's a
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: long laundry list, folks, But mainstream business always at least
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: here in New York. Look, we're both sitting in a
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: studio in New York right now. New Yorkers didn't take
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Trump seriously because they know him as like a third
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: or fourth tier. I'm not even saying anything critical. He's
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: just not one of the giant developers, not a big
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: guy in real estate. But that was his brand, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that was his reputation, and the rest of the country
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: saw him very different. Yeah, and but and so I
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: think Teal's presence helped bring around some of that, like
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the donor class, some of the kind of mainstream support
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: um and and and the other thing is so at
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that at the convention, of course, Teal gave what I
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: think was like really a historic speech. You know, I
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: think it was a speech that made him profoundly uncomfortable,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: but he said, um, you know, I'm proud to be gay,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: and I'm proud to be an American and and that
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: was historically significant. You know, the first time at Republican
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: convention somebody you known openly gay person had spoken and
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: acknowledged their um sexuality. And it wasn't just that he
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: did it, but he got around you know, a huge ovation.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: It was a moment of I think legitimate um, you know,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: equality and a quality for a political party that has
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: been and had been, you know, pretty hostile to the
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: rights of gays and lesbians applauding Peter tell I think
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: made a difference and and help help convey something about
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Trump that I think was valuable. And then the final
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: thing is, you know, Tile hadn't donated to the campaign
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: until mid October. He donated days after the Access Hollywood
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: tape UM had come out, the tape where Trump was um,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you know, quoted, you know, seeming to endure sexual assault.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Now at the time, you know, there are all the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: all these like Republican figures were basically trying to get
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: as far away from Trump as they could. They were like,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't really you know, because a lot of like um,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of people running away from what they saw
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: as a just a total disaster. Trump's gonna lose. And
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: and you know, two things happened. One of which was
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: wiki leaks happened, and that I think, you know how
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: changed the media cycle and and and helped Trump friends
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the Russians give props to them. And the second thing
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: was Peter Teal, instead of running away, ran towards this
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and he makes a big donation one point to five million,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: which of course Chump changed for Peter Teal, but in
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: in political terms, is a significant sum. And not only that,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: but gives a speech where he defends Trump and he says, um, listen,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to defend the comments, but but overall,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: you gotta look at the big picture, and he says,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: we need to take Trump um uh seriously, not literally,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: So don't listen to the literal comments, look at the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: broader image. And I think that first you're gonna believe
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: me or you're lion eyes, because that's what that speech was.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And shockingly, it was a very effective speed. I think
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: it very much helped shape um public opinion. He actually
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: cribbed it from an Atlantic from an Atlantic story, so
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I should give credit to that. But but in any case,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: it definitely helps shape opinion around Trump, and I think
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: it helped not only um, you know, helped Trump kind
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of right the ship. But then post election, you know,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: we saw it actually a lot of business leaders you know,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: kind of participate in the honeymoon. They said, you know what,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: giving let's give this a shot and um, and there
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: was there were a handful of meetings, you know, probably
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: most famously this meeting of tech leaders um in mid December,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: that teal arrange where he had basically post election. After yeah,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the CEOs of basically all of the big technology companies there,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: uh you know, the Microsoft, uh CEO, Google founders, and
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: you know, it's basically the representatives from the you know,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: nine largest tech companies, which of course that that's like
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: most of the big tech companies in the United States
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: UM are all there, and they're all basically trying to
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: trying to work with with Trump. And I think til,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, he literally organized that meeting, but I think
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: he also helped create the conditions that allowed that to happen.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: And I think you have to say, like Trump maybe
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: didn't do that much with that, and you know, those
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: relationships were short lasting, but it definitely brought a bunch
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: of people who had had before that been very critical
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: of Trump to the table. Quite fascinating. Before we get
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to the tax stuff and the New Zealand stuff with
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Peter Teal and some of the other wacky things, I
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: have to ask you how challenging was it to do
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: this research because this is deeply reported. You know, this
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: isn't just like very superficial. You clearly went down the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole. Yeah, it was very challenging because you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Teal has made UM, has has carved out a lot
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: of uh, you know, secrecy around himself. You know, didn't
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: cooperate much. Did he talk to you So No, he
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: didn't cooperate, But he also didn't um you know, I
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: he wasn't helpful. Um and at times I think he
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: was a little bit unhelpful, but but he didn't really
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: he also didn't try to stop me. Uh I. Um,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you know early in the process. I you know, as
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: one does you know when you're doing like a journalistic
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: project such this. In addition to talking to you know,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: former employees, friends, colleagues, you know, uh for classmates you
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: know or whatever, I also you know, approached Teal and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: h and had you know, series of meetings with his
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you know PR people and and ultimately uh an off
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the record meeting in l A with with the man himself.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And um, you know, to play that tape right now.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: How guarded was he or is he sort of Hey,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: this is off the record, and he felt comfortable being
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: a little frank He was very guarded. Um, he is
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: very guarded. I mean he's somebody who um you know
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: that's the PERSONA. Yeah, he he really wants to play
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: this behind the scenes role. He really doesn't like um,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: scrutiny of any kind when he you know, he does
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: talk to the press. He actually appears, uh, he does
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: speeches sometimes, but it's almost always um, in front of
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: uh basically a friendly interview or somebody who's not going
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: to to kind of push him on some of these
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: kind of further out ideological things or push him on
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: some of the business practices that something that his companies
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: have been involved with, some of which are are pretty questionable. Um.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: And and of course I wanted to go there, and um,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: you had no choice, you had to go. Yeah, Yeah,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I mean I just wanted to look. I wanted to
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: you know, there had been there. Deal is an interesting
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: guy because there is uh, there's there's sort of two
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: myths around him. One is the um, he's like a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: villainous right wing billionaire. That's kind of like the left
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: wing view. And then the right wing view is that
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: he is this and and the view that's kind of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: common in Silicon Valley is that he is basically this
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: libertarian hero. He's like, um, you know, combination of iron
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Rand and an iron Rand character. He's an intellectual and
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a builder John Galt for the modern New Europe. Yeah,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and so and I wanted to you know, obviously both
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: those stories have truth to them, and I think understanding
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: where they come from is really interesting. But I wanted
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: to do something that uh like hopefully complicated both stories
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: and and and got actually at the at the real
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: person and til I think is is really you know,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: has really invested in his own mythology and and at
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: times that that's really interesting. Let's let's talk about some
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: of the mythology where things that are a little out
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: there are kind of intriguing. And let's start with the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: billion dollar I RA tell us about how any of
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: us can have a billion dollars tax free. I'm glad
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: we moved to the service portion of the of the show.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Um So teal so roth Ira H. This was created
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: in the in the nineties. It was designed as like
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: a middle class uh thing for lower middle class. Uh.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: The idea is you put after tax dollars in and
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: anything anything you make on your inside of your ira.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Your roth ira is tax free. And they did this
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: because they were trying without limitation. Uh. Well, so there
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: are some really important that once it's in there, it's
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: it's tax free, no limitation. They did try to have
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: some limitations on how much you could put in the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: original contribution limit with two thousand dollars, I think it's
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: about six thousand now there were there. They're pretty low
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: income caps. I think around it's a little higher now,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: but around a hundred thousand makes sense if it's if
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: it's if you're using pretax dollars. But if it's after
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: tax dollars, is it just too expensive for the government?
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Who knows? So? So yeah, and and so what what
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Teal figure it out is that you can put in
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: um you can you can buy shares and privately held
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: venture back companies. Early on shares are pretty much causing zero,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like a thousandth of a penny. So early on in PayPal,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Teal uses a roth Ira now, which which he you know,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: at the time, I don't think he had much income,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: maybe no income at all um as as you know
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: CEO at first as an investor in this company and
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: then a CEO in a startup. So but he uses
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the roth Ira to buy shares in PayPal for like
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a thousandth of a penny, and over the next couple
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of years acquires more PayPal shares for fractions of a penny,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and and and you know, and basically those shares then
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: we're ultimately worth millions of dollars, um, tens of millions
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: of dollars. Then he uses some of that money inside
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: the roth ira to buy shares and palenteer, palenteer. Again,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: We're going from you know, a valuation of near zero
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: to it's it's worth fifty billion dollars today. Um. Same
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: thing with Facebook, right, Facebook buying buying early shares, and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Facebook inside the roth ira, and then you know, those
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: shares you know, ultimately are worth um. You know, at
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the end of twenty nineteen, Teel's roth ira had something
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: like six billion dollars in it. Now. UM. Stock markets
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: done pretty well since then, so and particularly technology companies,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: particularly kinds of companies that Peter Teal investment. So it's,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: you know, my guess is that is his roth ira,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: his tax free account is in is maybe around eight
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: billion dollars something like that. Now maybe a little more.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Um and uh and again it's it's it's this amazing
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: you know kind of it's it's not really I guess
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: it's a loophole. I don't know what to call it.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: It's just a very aggressive tax strategy. Now that thing
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: about this is and if you depending on who you
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: get your tax advice from, they might advise you not
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: to do this because there is a specific rule UM
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: that says you cannot buy shares and companies you control UM.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: So you can't. If you own a restaurant, you can't
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: like put the restaurant inside the roth ir right, that's
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: self dealing. Um. The great thing about these venture backed
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: tech companies is although somebody like Peter Teal has effective
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: control UM, he does not have legal control because you
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: know there's an independent border directors. He only own the company.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: So so it's it's a very very aggressive interpretation of
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: these statutes because effectively the CEO of a venture backed
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: tech company has a lot of influence on the stock price,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you know, on the share price of these companies, but
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: influences in control exactly. That's that's the loophole. And we've
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: seen so so so that you know, structure now has
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: become very popular and silicon value like other people have.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: You know, this is a thing that wealth managers UM
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: are now you have have made have made into a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: little cottage industry. And we even saw you know, when
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: this first came out. So it's kind of heartbreaking to
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: me because like this was in the book, which which
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: was in a galley at that point, but Pro Publica
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: broke this story. Um and uh. And and the way
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: that the spin that you heard from some folks was
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: was not like, oh, what an outrage, It was like,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: you know, how can I do that? And um and,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: which which I understand because I mean, everyone wants to
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: pay less in taxes, but it really is quite a
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: you know, a perversion of the original intent of the law,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: which was again to to help basically like lower and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: middle income people and and and not to just deprive
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: the US government of a huge amount of tax revenue.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So so let's look about something else that's a little
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: bit out there, New Zealand. Why become a New Zealand citizen?
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: What's that about? Well, so if you, if you, if
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: you listen to what Til said, he really loves New Zealand,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: which I think is probably partly true. He's a big
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings fan. I was gonna say, Peter
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Jackson fan, then yeah, um Lord of Rings films were
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: were we're We're shot there and you'd still see a shire,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: there's the Hobbits, and let's be honest, like New Zealand
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: is great. I mean it's it's a you know, a
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: very nice place to to to visit. I mean a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: beautiful nature, great great cuisine. UM. I think the specific
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: appeal to Teal when he got the New Zealand citizenship,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: and he did this in a in a really interesting way.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I mean he was in secret um and it happened
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: when Obama was president, and and you know, as my
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: my senses and as I say in the book, that
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you know he was basically looking for a backup plan.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I mean he was really worried about um, about Obama
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and about the Democrats. And I think you had you
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: had all those concentration camps in Texas and they were
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: gonna round everybody up, and right, I mean that was
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not they were. This is legitimate what some of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: the far right was playing. And and and when you're
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Peter Teel and you have this enormous amount of money
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: that's tied up in a UM it's it's legal, but
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: but but a little bit on certain structure where at
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: any moment the I R S could say because because
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: of the control thing, right, UM, it leaves him a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: little bit vulnerable because you could go back and start
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: looking for for violations. Maybe they're not real violation, maybe
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: they're just bogus. You could bust his jobs if you
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: want to. And and the way the IRA laws, the
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: way these rules are structured, if you break one, if
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: you do one, if you make one mistake within that IRA,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: they can take they can take the whole thing. They can,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: they can they could capture it. They can well they can.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: They have to collect taxes on the whole scenario is
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: you lose your tax and even that you have the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: wherewithal to fight it. Eventually you'll negotiate it down. But
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: so his worst case scenario is he might pay half
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: the taxes he owes exactly. But I think what he
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: was trying to do was find a friendlier jurisdiction and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: and back then or as a potential backup plan, right,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: not necessarily where he's gonna um, not necessarily like he's
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: gonna go run away from Obama, but um but at
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: the time, you know, New Zealand had a right wing government, um,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and it was very it was very easy for him
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: to acquire citizenship. I mean, he only spent uh twelve
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: days or so in the country, uh to to get
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: the citizenship and UM. And then I think it, you know,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: gives him a potential way to to at least as
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: a negotiating point if he ends up negotiating with the U. S. Government. UM,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: being able to to you know, claim citizenship or whatever
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: in a foreign country. I think UM was potentially helpful
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: or just as a way to, hey, let me get
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: away from these crazy liberals. And like the one of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the you know, one of the big ideas that that
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Teal and his followers are into is this idea of exit,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: that that you that billionaires should potentially be willing to
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: threaten to leave the United States in order to push policymakers,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: you know, in the direction that they want them to push,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: that you can vote or you can leave, and that
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: that the threat of leaving is an important part of that,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: which I think is really I mean, it's certainly counter
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: to like a normal notion of m patriotism or whatever
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: if I want to buy into that, you know, or whatever,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: UM I do personally, but anyway, UM I but it's
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: definitely like the idea is that you should be willing
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: to kind of jurisdiction shop. And so that's what I
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: think he was doing. After Trump was elected. My reporting
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: says that basically hasn't been in the country since Trump
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: took office. He's maybe he's maybe come back, you know,
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: there's he's now renovating one of his properties. Maybe he
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: went back, but as far as I can tell, he
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: hasn't been there since in New Zealand. Yeah, quite quite interesting.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about something else that's a little surprising.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: And I just had a look up the name of
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Ryan Holiday's book, Conspiracy Peter Til Hull Colgan, Gawker and
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: the Anatomy of Intrigue. So, uh, it's now come out.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: And and Holiday did some nice reporting a couple of
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: years on this a couple of years ago that Teal
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: is the one who funded the entire Hull Colgan litigation
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: against Gawker because Gawker some years ago out of Teal
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: as gay and then had the bad judgment to reproduce
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: a and publishist X tape that was surreptitiously recorded of
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: of Hulk Hogan and effectively Teal bankrupted Gowker. He apparently
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: carries a grudge. Yeah, I'll say, yeah, this was as
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: I as I talked about in the book, I mean,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the whole Cogan case was not really isolated. He was
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: trying basically all sorts of things. Uh. In the period
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: between when that blog post outing him came out, which
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I believe was late two thousand seven, Um uh and
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: uh and the and and the ultimate you know verdict,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: which is in sixteen UM basically was you know, there's
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: there's sort of other litigation efforts there was you know,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: he had had hired private investigators. He also tried to
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: kind of romance Hawker at one point. But but ultimately
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: this Hogan thing was a real gift to Peter Teal
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: because it was a very clear cut case. Gawker had
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: published this um, this this sex tape that had been
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: recorded without whold Cogan's knowledge or consent, which the violation
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and privacy and the and the great thing about that
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: from from the sort of Peter Teel perspective is number one,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: it's not a free speech case, right, makes it easier,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit easier to make. And and number two,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: he gets it in front of a Florida jury. Um,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: you know, Hulk Hogan is like is from Tampa. He's
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: like the famous person in Tampa. And you have this, uh,
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: this celebrity bona fide celebrity going against this like as
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: as Teal and his allies presented it as a sociopathic
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: New York media company, and and and the and the
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: case was pretty clear cut. So it's like not surprising
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: that the jury, um, you know, opted to bankrupt Gawker, um.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: But what you know, what is surprising, of course, is
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: that is that this billionaire was was the was the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: man behind it and a particularly the amount of time
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: that passed and the way that he did it. He
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: did it in secret. I mean, he didn't tell anybody.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: It only came out afterwards and after it happened, you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: he didn't he wasn't apologetic, right, he said, this is
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: my proudest philanthropic moment. This is my great contribution, um
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: to to the world, which is you know, that's pretty
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: out there, right, it's it's it's a it's it's definitely
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: um different. And I think it wont him a lot
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: of fans, of course, on the on the right, because
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Gawker was seen as this like liberal media outlet. He
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: was seen as a billionaire willing to you know, take
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: it to the take it to the liberal media. Um.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: But of course it also I think critics rightly point
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: out that like this has profound implications for freedom of
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the press and for for for other potentially chilling exactly. So,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I want to continue discussing some of the specifics about
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: teal because it's fascinating. But I always have been operating
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: under the assumption that Silicon Valley is, you know, part
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: of the triangle of power. It's New York, d C.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: And Silicon Valley as engines of of economy, technology, and government.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: What don't we know about Silicon Valley. Isn't it a
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: given that they're a power player? Or are they more
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: powerful than most Americans have realized? Well, I think there's
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: still I mean, I agree with your assessment completely. I
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: think that I think Silkic Valley is still has more
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: power than than people realize. And I also think that
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: Silicon that that certain aspects of the of the Silicon
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Valley ideology have really um kind of seeped into our
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: culture in ways that we don't fully appreciate. So I mean,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, move fast and break things certainly one example,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: So this idea that disruption is a good, a social
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: good that it needs to be embraced, um is I
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: I'd argue that is a new thing that most that
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have bought into, even people who
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: are degrees away. Dimma, that's been around for decades. Um.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: But well yeah, but I think there's I think there's
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: something a little bit different about UM. I mean it's
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: been a while since I've read the Innovator's dilemma. But well,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: you just rub something then eventually you get disrupted. Yeah,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: it's only you know, most of these companies only last
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: a certain on. Apple is a rarity that disrupted itself.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, so I think that. So, but I
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: think the idea that rule breaking in particular is something
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: worth celebrating, is is new and different. And like the
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: way we we're watching this attitude, um you know, Facebook,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: there's this whistleblower and we're we're suddenly like watching all
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: this criticism of Facebook and sort of wondering why, like
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: why is Mark Zuckerberg so indifferent to to use responsibilities
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to society. And it's like, well, that's because that's the
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: whole point of this company and this ideology. UM. I also, um,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: I think that the um I think that this idea
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that technology companies so so one of Teal's big ideas, right,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: is that that these technology companies should are basically in
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: a ruled world that that we that we would be
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: better off. And this is something that is i'd say
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: widely people buy into and including a lot of liberals
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and stuff, that like, basically technology is going to set
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: us free. And I think and that it's yeah, well exactly,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and I think they are you know, to assume that
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the people who run Facebook or Amazon or Google are
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: benevolent overlords is really the height of naivete. It reminds
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: me of I realized this a somewhat controversial thing to say,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: but like when I was reading the book Coke Land
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: by Christopher Leonards Cooke Brothers and and Coke Industries in particular,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: the way Coke Industries had sort of um, you know,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: had this you know, really important industrial conglomer and they
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: had really changed the conversation around regulation, particularly deregulation, to
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: a point where like everyone sort of bought into that
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: the story that they were telling. And I think the
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: same thing, including liberals, right, And I think the same
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: thing kind of happened has happened, and maybe it's continuing
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: to happen with Silicon Valley, where we've sort of all
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: bought into the idea that you know that that disruption
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: is good, that tech companies should have more power, not
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: less um and and you know, we're obviously we're in
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: a reckoning right now. But I don't know, I think
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: those ideas are still more or less ascendant, and it's
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: it's still really outside the mainstream if you that's interesting.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised you think those ideas is still ascendant because
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: there's a difference between saying, hey, here's how we've always
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: done it, but we have a way to do it faster, better, smarter,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: versus just look at the three biggest companies that are
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: kind of going through turmoil. Uber we work in there, nos,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: so have we seen peak disruption and now things are
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: curling back? Maybe, although I would push back on some
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: of that because I think so, Yeah, it's true that
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: with Uber, we you know, the founder got bounced out
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: and we now have little too frat boy Kinder Gendler Uber.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: But how much it's not making money that way? Uh
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: it was expected to. But yeah, but how much has
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Uber really changed? I mean, we we like this labor
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: model that Uber pioneered, so like you know that that
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, completely and different to the um
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: you know, to the to the needs of workers, I
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: would argue has become it's it's not that labor model
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: is not on the on the retreatomy, no healthcare, no,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: not necessarily any qualifications. And and so I don't know,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: like I think they're I think it's true that that
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: we have become more tuned to some of the failings
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: of the tech industry. I'm not sure that alright, So
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: outright fraud is not allowed, disruption, no health care. Hey,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: maybe this guy's qualified to drive. Maybe he's not, but
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: he's got a license. What more do you want? We're
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: okay with that, and we work. What do we care?
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: A bunch of you has lost a bunch of money, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I think I mean that's pretty fair. I mean I again,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: and I also think, like, not just a bunch of you.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Ce's mostly soft banking. People care about them much less
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: than they do Benchmark or Sequoia or flat Iron or whoever. Right,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, when we look at the
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: big companies Facebook, Google, like it doesn't feel like there's
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: really any serious I don't know, like it's it's it's
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: it's not clear to me how Facebook could be reined in,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: and I don't think it's really clear to anybody how
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: it could be brained in. Well, with the benefit of
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: perfect hindsight, it's pretty clear hindsight that a lot of
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: the is uh seminal purchases that were done, whether it's
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Instagram or WhatsApp, or go down the whole list of
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: of some of their best properties. If people weren't asleep
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: at the switch in the any trust department, that might
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: not have been permitted. I suspect going forward, Facebook might
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: encounter more difficulty trying to swallow a competitor, a Nason
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: competitor early because arguably instant Listen, when you speak to
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: the kids and you're closer in age than I am,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: they're not on Facebook, They're on Insta and Facebook is
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: now for us old people. Um and I can't stand Facebook,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: so I'm not one of those old people. But I
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: use what's app pretty regularly and I use some of
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: their other stuff. Um. So, so what happens when the
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the next TikTok comes along that Facebook wants to buy,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: will they still be in that position? Will they be
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: able to make that purchase? Yeah? Completely agree? I think
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: I think you're right that there was you know, total
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: will failure imagination there um and and yeah you would,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: you would think there will be more Google. I don't
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen with I don't see does anyone
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: really see Amazon getting split up or Google being broken
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: into g drive and this and that, or or Apple
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: being broken into a max side and a phone side
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: and a service. None of that really looks likely. If
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: if any of the big tech is going to suffer,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: the one that seems to be most vulnerable seems to
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: be Facebook. Yeah, yeah, because they have these reputational problems.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: There's also a way you can imagine. I mean again,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna happen, but you could imagine
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: breaking up, like breaking Facebook into Instagram, and it's like
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: not impossible. And clearly Till is behind the concept that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: bigger is better. Let these companies do what they're gonna do,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: and regulated the marketplace will sort it out. Let's stick
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: with that concept and talk about palatier Um, which, ironically
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: for a sort of anti government libertarian, he's essentially his
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: biggest client is the U. S. Government and all the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: other governments. Palanteer got into quite a bit of trouble
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: post election tell us about what the company is and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: how it's sort of ran a foul and seemed to
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: have shaken it all. Yeah. So Palanteer was started by
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: teal Um basically out of this, you know, this intuition
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: that he could take some of the security technology that
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Paypala developed, well not even technology really an idea UM
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: that Paypala developed, which was to use network analysis, so
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: looking at who is connected to whom, um to figure
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: out to how to do security any and he offered
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: that to the U. S. Government got backing initially from
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the CIA, which was hugely um both hugely important for
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Palanteer because it kind of opened the door um fiz
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly too and gave him some money, but also
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: legitimacy with government contracts. And then that legitimacy not only
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: UM got them contracts with other it's the government including
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: the U. S. Military, It got them legitimacy with the
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: corporate world. Because if you're like a chief security officer
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: at a big bank or whatever, the idea that you
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: can have c I A grade you know, data mining technology,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: which is more or less what they were promising. You know,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: you two can have the same technology we used to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: get bin laden um to like you know, to to
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: run your uh to to like come up with your
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: trading strategy or or route out you know, bad behavior
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: by your trader or something. Um. That was like a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: really compelling pitch. Now that pitch was not entirely true.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: I think, as I talked about the book, like I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: think the idea that Palanteer like was responsible for forgetting
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: bin laden is like a huge stretch that that kind
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: of creation of the media. But the narrative of like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: c I A grade data mining for the government has
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: been for for government and for private enterprise has been
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: hugely successful in the long run. Now, in sixteen though
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Palanteer was really in bad shape. It had it had
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: lost out a bunch of on a bunch of big contracts.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Um it was. It wasn't looking so good. A lot
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of the big companies that were doing business with it
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: had had backed out and you know, gone in other directions.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: And then uh post Trump though, of course, things have
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: really gone well. And Palatiner will say, hey, it has
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with politics, um, just just just a
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: matter of beating the bushes. And you know, and you
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: know it's sometimes like everything just falls into place, and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: you know, my reporting and also you know, I think
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: just normal rationality suggests that like having a major backer
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: of the president, especially a president like Trump, who as
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: we know, likes to get involved in the nitty gritty
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's not totally averse to rewarding his
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: friends and punishing his enemies. Um. You know, had had
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: had a positive impact on the company and helped them
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: win this eight hundred million dollar military contract and then
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, dozens of other contracts worth you know,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: in the in the hundreds of millions, if not billions
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: of dollars. And we've seen the company, you know, really
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: go from being kind of substantial but not that big,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: you worth twenty billion dollars or so um to to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: now it's worth you know, fifty billion. They have these
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: huge military contracts, um and and and during that time
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: the product has improved a bit, so they've you know,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: they've managed to land some corporate deals and of course
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: that's been great for Peter Teal who was uh the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: single largest shareholder owning owning a lot of those shares
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: through the roth Ira so so nice tax advantage there.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: And uh and because of the way Palentteer structured um.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: The founders have this special class of share that's a
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: that's a group that includes teal um that allows them
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: to effectively, you know, control company. So so it's uh
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: so he's kind of in the catbird seat. And I
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: think I would argue that a huge reason for that
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: is because of of his decision to support Trump early,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: which got him access to the White House, which got
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: access to Palentteer, and you know, and kind of the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: rest is history. So before we get to our favorite questions,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I have one other thing I have to get to.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about crypto. He was pretty early into looking
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: at bitcoin and some of the other cryptocone sees what
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: led him there and what is he doing that space
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: count So yeah, I mean really early, he like from
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: like nineties early, like way ahead of why are we
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: relying on printed government dollars? Shouldn't it be free? It's
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: kind of a libertarian fantasy. You can go back and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: I did you know reporting this book? But like that,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: you can go back to PayPal And the way they
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: were talking about PayPal is really not that different from
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: the way the not no crypto community has gotten pretty
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: big and pretty diverse ideologically, but but it's it's the
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: way the kind of ultra libertarian part of the cryptic narratives. Yeah,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: you know, so so that he was talking in like
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: two thousand or thereabouts about giving everyone a Swiss bank
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: account in their pocket. This idea that once you had
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: money inside of PayPal would be impossible for governments to track,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: and in particular be impossible for um repressive governments to track.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: So when you so like, if you're in a country
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: with current see controls, you know, there's really nothing stopping
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: you from putting money in PayPal account and then using it.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: And and that is really similar. And he talked about
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: how this was gonna road the sovereignty of the nation state.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: And this is really similar to how kind of the
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: libertarian um part of of of the crypto world talks
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: and and and kind of what's motivating some of the
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: some of the crypto ideology. So I think it's it's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: not surprising at all that he got in, you know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: on crypto early. He you know, for I don't know
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: how much crypto he has now. I mean, he definitely
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: had some crypto for a time. It's unclear if he
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: if he's sold or not. Um uh, but he's also
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: making investments in crypto companies and he's clearly, you know,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: pretty interested. There was like a little mini scandal earlier
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: this year, at least in the crypto world. You may
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: remember where Teal described bitcoin as potentially a an arm
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: of the Chinese government. Where he sort of said that,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: um because because it hurts I. You know, it wasn't
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: entirely clear, and all these crypto people kind of went
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: berserk because he's on our team, he's an early believer,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: and and my suspicion there is what was happening is
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: he was trying to shape regulation uh into a in
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: a favorable, favorable way in the United States, warning essentially,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: if the US goes to sleep on crypto, if we
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: don't move to kind of embrace and cultivate this industry,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: we're gonna lose to other countries, which iss China ends
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: up tossing out all their miners. And none of that
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: ended up being no, no, completely, It was exactly that.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: But it is exactly the same argument that Mark Zuckerberg
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: has made in terms of like how we should regulate Facebook.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: The reason we should let be hands off on Facebook
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: is because if we don't China and TikTok is gonna
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: you know, become supreme and then we're all gonna be
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: you know, living in a in like you know, G's
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: world or something. Um. There are also also like some
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: weird conspiracy theories and which I don't think are totally
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: out of the remo possibility. Like Teal is a big
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: time trader, you know, he's he's somebody who's always who
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: very often has bets on both sides of a particular
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: trend or a particular company, So it's possible you know,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: he was he was betting against Yeah, yeah, that that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: that that those comments were were aimed at a trade,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: like maybe he was trying to buy low. I don't know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: but it was. It was definitely like an interesting moment.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, Teal is always somebody worth watching,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: um because he knows kind of what's next, or he
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: has very good ideas about what's next and you know,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: right now for for in his world that's crypto. So
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's it's worth watching that space obviously,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: but also worth watching specifically what Teal does, what he
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: says about it so so fascinating. All right, So while
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I I have you let me jump to my favorite
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: questions that I asked all my guests, starting with tell us,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: what you've been streaming during uh the past eighteen months? Netflix?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: Amazon Prime podcast, What's keeping you? Yeah? So okay, So
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: I mean I just finished I finished Squid Game literally
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: two nights, surprisingly, surprisingly satisfying. I yeah, it was really good.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Although I did I found it so stressful, um that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: I had to watch my wife and I had to watch,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: like Ted Lasso, we do a palid cleansing exactly as
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: a rule, you can only we only watch one game
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: per not except for the last two, which were like
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: think the ninth one. The eighth one was thirty three
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: minutes and then the ninth one was short. But you know,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: anytime you watch stuff over time like that, you really
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: get the full flavor of it. I've been Also, I'm
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: a huge I listened to a lot of podcasts, but
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: um and right now I'm really into this really nerdy
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: virology podcast. It's called This Weekend Virology, which um uh
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: you know honestly like it's it did. The episodes are
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: really long, um and and I think, uh, what does
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: it cover? It's but it it covers the science behind viruses.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: But of course they've been talking about COVID all the time,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: and I think like really paying attention to what scientists
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: have been saying has been a great way for me,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: you know, to be ahead, ahead of the curve. I mean,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I think like these, um, you know, we're having this
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: this conversation about booster. You know, they've been talking about
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: this stuff for for months and and and and you
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: get a perspective that is um more nuanced but also
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: maybe more interesting than kind of the media narratives which
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: tend to swing. So it's made me a little bit
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: more kind of immune to like the latest freak out over. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: so so I tried to train Alexa and I couldn't
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: get it to do it that if anybody on TV
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: uses the phrase, I'm not an immunologist, but I want
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: the TV muted, just just I don't care what that
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: person has to say. What what else? Um, that's an
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: interesting podcast? What tell me what else besides that in
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: squid Game that's entertaining? Yeah? Yeah, so well I've been, Um,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: I've been. I run a lot, so I listened to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: all these crazy, crazy running podcasts. I also listen, you know,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: pretty religiously to the to the five thirty eight podcast
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Nate Silver, I know is controversial and people love to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: rag on him, but I think he's got a pretty
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: decent track record. Respect he's done better than most. But
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: I think his kind of like frame on politics is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: really useful. And it's another on where like, you know,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: when you pay super close attention to the polls, it
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: kind of makes you a little bit more immune to
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: the to the crazy swings in in in narrative, and
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: especially because I'm a you know, I'm a journalist. You know,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: I work at Bloomberg. You know, it's good for me
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: to like get that perspective because we as journalists are
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: very you know, we're immersed in the narrative, right. It's
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: like all we think about. The line I love is
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: the um news is equal cap weighted when reality is
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: market cat waited. Kind of fascinating. UM. Tell us about
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: some of your early mentors who helped shape your career. Yeah,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: my mentor, my big mentor was this woman Jane Brenson,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: who was basically the editor of inc And who came
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: out of the Wall Street Journal And she's just a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: really cool she's retired now. She's a really cool journalist.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: And UM. And you know, the thing I've been thinking,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about UM when I think about this question,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: was just you know, there was a point in my
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: career where, UM, I had like an opportunity, like freelance opportunity.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: I wanted to pursue it. And I went to her
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: she's my boss, as that can I do this? And
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: she said, know, you can't do it, only you have
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: to leave if you do it. Um, But but I
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: want you to leave, and I'm gonna make it easy
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: for you to. I'm gonna make it easy for you.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna structure. So basically, she kind of like allowed
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: me to you know, spread my wings like like you know,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: move and in a way that I think, like, well,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: obviously helped my career, and it's made me feel very
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: close to her. But it makes me think like that's whatever.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: That's a big part of mentorship is like at a
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: certain point that these these these yeah, and and and
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: not not necessarily reacting in a selfish way where you
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: know probably would have been better. It's often better right
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: to to to to push the mentees or whatever to
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: stay in the in a position of support where they're
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: helping you and and the fact that she's kind of
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: pushed me away and helped me, Like, you know, I
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's just anyway that we we've continued to
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: have very strong relationships and since then. So, I know
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: what it's like when you're writing a book and you
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: don't have time to read. But this is book has
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: been put away for a while. What have you been
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: reading since you finished writing contrem I just so, I
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: just finished a book called American Prometheus, which um is about.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: It's a biography of Robert Oppenheimer. Came out about fifteen
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: years ago. Oppenheimer's the guy who created the bomb for
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: you know what, He led the Los Alamos at lab
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: that they created the bomb. The book is, first of all,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: it's really good. It has it's like kind of I
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: hate this frame, but it honestly has interesting management lessons
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: because like I think Oppenheimer's management style was like it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: is actually kind of similar to Elon Musk, Like he's
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: sort of this you know, jack of all trades who's
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: really good at inspiring you know, people to Anyway, I
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: found it really interesting there. It also kind of has
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: interesting things to say about this whole you know, conversation
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: around cancel culture or whatever. You know. Oppenheimer famously was
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: um you know, kind of blacklisted as a as a
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: communist sympathizer, which he was to some extent. So anyway,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: there's there's just a lot of interesting stuff. It's about technology,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it's about um, you know, about management, and anyway, just
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: fascinating guy. And then another book, um that I've read
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: pretty recently I really liked is the The Man Is
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Solved the Market the story you know, the Jim Jim
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Simons my saying Simon's right, Renaissance technology book and and
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: just you know, the both like just explaining that I mean,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: I really love like explanatory journalism and just like explaining
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: how renaissance technologies you know, works, and how they made money,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: and the and the kind of really cool, um you know,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: ways in which it brought like this kind of sophisticated
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: math and stuff into into the finance world. I just
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: found like just mind expanding and really cool. Amazing book.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Terrible title because he didn't solve the moment. He just
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: figured out how to use the markets to make bucket
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: loads of money. And nobody, nobody has come close to
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: the sort of returns that he's generated with a couple
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: of billion dollars, but that's all he could run before
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: he started to see returns attenuate. Yeah yeah, yeah, so
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: so that's why they kicked out the outside investors early on. Uh,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: that book, it was fascinating and he just didn't amaze job.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: So I asked you before, we might as well talk
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: about this here. So when Zuckerberg, Zuckerberger, Uckerman, when Zuckerman
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: not Facebook, Ball Street Journal. When Zuckerman was writing the book,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: he reached out to a whole bunch of people who
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: had worked with Simon's early on and found himself getting
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: blocked by Simmons and said, hey, listen, this book is
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: coming out with your assistance or without. You can either
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: help shape it or just be unhappy with the result
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: is and ended up getting, you know, twenty thirty hours
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: of interview time with him. You tried that with Ed,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: got a little bit of of of gift from him,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: but not nearly. Simon's is, you know, much older the
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: end of his career was and is now doing philanthropy,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: so he was more amenable to that. You didn't get
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: that sort of qual Yeah, I think til is a
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: little bit. I mean Simon's of course had been very secretive,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: and I read, I mean particularly like the introduction of
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: the book describes his kind of back and forth with
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Simon's and all these people, you know, telling him forget it,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: you're totally you know, I can't talk to you. You're
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: gonna which I really enjoyed, you know, and I found
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: very inspiring just because of course, I you know, I
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: ran into some of the same, um, the same things.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, Teal has been very closed off and and
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: that was to me part of the opportunity to book
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: because any time, you know, anytime someone is is closed
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: off like that, it's a journalistic opportunity because they you know,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: there there's there's lots of stuff to say. Um. The
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: other thing that kind of worked in my favor, um
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: is that you know, venture capital is like a pretty
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: it's a networking business, right, so, which which hurts me
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: because everybody talked to somewhere down the line they may
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: need to go to Peter Teal to ask for money.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: So even people who hate him are like unwilling to
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: They don't want to like cut off any future, um,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: you know, any future investment, which is is particularly important
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: because like the way these VC deals right work is
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: that it's really important to have great competition. So even
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: if you don't take money from Teal, you really want
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: to have him as a potential backer to help, you know,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: create a sense of you know. So, so that works
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: against you. But because he's all over the place, because
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: they're you know, dozens hundreds of companies that he's an
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: investor in. Um, all these companies have employees. There's just
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty big network. So even if you're closed off,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: there are ways to you know, there are ways to
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: to to sort of work your way inside because the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: network is so sprawling and you have people who are
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: are who actually know a lot, but don't necessarily have
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: like a super close relationship with deal. So so anyway,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: I think that that was helpful, especially at the beginning,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: because you're always sort of trying to work your way
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: into the you know, into the inside. Fascinating. Uh, what
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: sort of advice would you give to a recent college
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: grad who is interested in the career in journalism? Oh? Um,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I would say that, um, you should and this would
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: be my advice for like any career. I guess you
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: should try to read a lot of stuff. UM. I
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: feel like people don't, Um, it's like the most obvious
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: thing you can do. But like, but but like and
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: this is I think you research, you want to go yeah,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: and and and and also just like and and read
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: it for real, Like don't just try to like, okay,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: figure out what that book says, but like really actually
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: read it, because because that's how like I think that's
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: like pretty good advice for almost any career because but
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: but particularly in journalism. I mean, you know, most good
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: story ideas and stuff come from for me anyway, come
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: from reading things. It's it's you know, talking to people
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: is helpful, but a lot of times, like it's just
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: some something I read and it's like that raises an
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: interesting question and gets you to another question. And I
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: just think people tend to It's also good to just
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: be a little bit I think undirected, like again, like
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: not just trying to figure out what something says, but
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: like just just engage with it on an emotional level.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: And and like sometimes good things happen, sometimes not though
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes you just you know, very very interesting. And and
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: my final question in what do you know about the
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: world of technology, venture capital, finance investing today that you
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: wish you knew twenty years or so? Ago fifteen years
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's two things like
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: one and this is they're kind of the opposite. So
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But one is UM. Like that that
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: that book, the Zuckerman book, was really mind expanding for
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: me because it's all about the way the computers have
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: had this you know, crazy impact on the world of money,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: and like I wish I knew and and and it's
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: still happening, and there's still ways in which, like you know,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: you watch the look at this like Wall Street bet
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: stuff where where there's interesting dynamics happening on social media
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: and there's just like so many ways that algorithms are
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: like driving you know, moving money and and doing so
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: are are are are telling the story of our lives
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: and like that, I mean I wish I knew more.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: I wish I knew more about that now, I wish
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: I had been more tuned to it, you know, fifteen
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: years ago. Um. The other thing is UM Networks, and
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: it's this is like the opposite, but like like in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Venture Capital, UM, so much of it is still just
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: like a is happening on an interpersonal level. It's these
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: like the teals world is completely you know, uh it's
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: completely person a person, it's completely loyalty based. It's all
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: about you know, who knows who, and and I think
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: like understanding that or even though that's kind of the
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: opposite of the computer thing, would have would have also
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: helped me a great deal because really, especially in venture
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: capital like still a very kind of old school business.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: It's not like, uh, I mean they're buying they're they're
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: buying stock and companies that do computer stuff, but the
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: way they're doing it is very very much about um, yeah,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: impressions and networks and and who you know and stuff.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: Very interesting. Well, thanks Max for being so generous with
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: your time. We have been speaking with Max Jafkin. He
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: is the author of the Contrarian Peter Teal and Silicon
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: Valleys Pursuit of Power. If you enjoy this conversation, well
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: be should and check out any of our previous uh
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: nearly four hundred interviews we've done. You can find those
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: at iTunes, Spotify, wherever you find your favorite podcast. We
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Sign up from
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: my daily reads at rid Halts dot com. Check out
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: my column on Bloomberg dot Com, slash Opinion. Follow me
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Halts. I would be remiss if
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: I did not thank our crack staff that helps put
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: these conversations together each week. Mohammed is my audio engineer,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is my head of research. Atika val Bron
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: is our project manager. Paris Wold is my producer. I'm
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: Barry Ridholts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.