💸 "At-Home Covid Tests and Other Powers of a Tech Billionaire"

Category: Biz & Tech | 💸 Venture Capital

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[2:56] CP: “I bought a rapid testing Covid machine and I have a bunch of tests, so I have been able to see my poker friends now.” […]
KS: “That is the most Silicon Valley thing I’ve ever heard.”
CP: […] “I think it’s the most lonely thing.”

[4:02] “I think we are still another year away from everything getting sorted out. Look at the Pfizer vaccine as an example. It’s only 90% effective, which sounds like a great number, except when you think about the fact that 50% of people will get the vaccine. […] I think the only way to protect the American economy and American individual freedoms will actually be to impose more invasive behaviors by the federal bureaucracy. There will be a biological Patriot Act. You will have an app on your phone that you will use to authenticate yourself as being disease free.”

[5:09] “Companies will start to act like mini governments. Even more than they already have. What do you think the odds are that a big tech company, a highly profitable one basically says the following: You will have to be vaccinated if you want to work at my office. And I think that’s going to create an entire new sort of Pandora’s Box, which we haven’t seen before, which is this further encroachment of these large organizations. The more profitable you are, the more powerful you are and then the more that you become central to an individual’s life and you supersede what governments do for you.”

[8:42] “We are at the beginning of a 15 to 30 years cycle. And those that can innovate through the lens of software and deemphasizing financial engineering will survive and those that cannot will get rebuilt by an entirely new version of that business that uses a modern suite of technologies.”

[15:33] “Politicians are no longer thoughtful, intellectual policy agents. They are people who are extremely good at being in front of cameras, at tweeting on Twitter, and curating a narrative that sells. There is a huge disconnect between that and thoughtful, effective policy. […] We are basically picking reality stars in a popularity contest.”

[19:34] “I think it’s important to fix these root caused issues, otherwise symptomatically what you’re going to have are more and more extreme caricaturesque people on both the left and the right. And in that it’ll be easier fortunately for centrists to win. […] I think that we are now in an era of centrism.”

[27:19] “A SPAC is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company and basically what it is is a blank check shell. Meaning, it’s just a business that has a leadership team, led by me as the CEO, and we have a balance sheet of money in a bank account and we use it to buy another company. So essentially what it is, it’s a public company. But what that company has is only one thing, which is cash. […] There are really three advantages of [SPACs]: The first is speed […] - 100 days versus 18 months, certainty - which is a price that you know about versus a price that you don’t and […] sponsorship. And what that means is who is the person that’s running the SPAC.”

[32:14] “The single most important thing to ask in a SPAC is: How much of your own money are you putting in this thing. […] In my deals so far - I have done three - I put 453 million dollars to work […]. And over the next thirty, I’ll have 5 or 6 billion dollars of my own money in these things.”

[36:38] “[Areas people should look at]: I’m taking climate change as my number one priority. I’m spending more time there than on anything else. Probably 50/60% of my time. […] I think that the world’s first trillionaire will be a climate change person.”