This week’s episode features a new friend, David Sacks. Maybe you’ve heard of PayPal? David was their first COO. He’s part of the ‘Paypal Mafia’ that includes Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin. David’s the founder of Yammer (acquired by Microsoft for $1 billion), turned around Zenefits as interim CEO, and founded Craft Ventures. Add investments in Facebook, Uber, Space X, Palantir, Airbnb and Houzz. He’s also co-host of the All-In Podcast. But today he’s here to talk about the future. And it’s so bright, we’re gonna have to wear shades!
Also – Mark your calendar, I’m a guest on David’s latest venture, Callin – a social-podcasting app. Listen to my interview with David, then download the Callin app, and join Dave and I tonight when he interviews me!
You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify or Apple and now all the episodes are on my YouTube channel as well.
For more details on today’s conversation read on below…
Guest: David Sacks
Profile: Founder and GP of Craft Ventures
Where to Find Him: Twitter
What’s David Panicked About?: The mob that’s formed to take away our newsfeed.
The Takeaway:
David’s latest venture, Callin, is a synthesis of podcasting and social audio he calls “social podcasting”. Anyone can create a show and record in front of a live audience. The problem with social audio is the conversations are kind of like a party line. Everyone’s in there fighting for the microphone and you don’t really have a host who’s in control. Callin is fixing those problems. And speaking of startups, there’s never been a better time. It’s never been frothier. It’s never been easier for a founder to raise money or do anything, except maybe recruit. It’s just never been a better time. It’s also never been a better time for investors. VC is on pace to mint a thousand unicorns this year. At the end of last year, the pace was maybe one per day. Now we’re at three per day. Economy-wise, the money printing has led to a tremendous amount of liquidity in the system, and the Fed continues to pump. We have massive deficit spending and government debt well over 100 percent of GDP. We’ve never run peacetime debt like this, and never ran deficits like this in a good economy. There’s a lot of risk built into the macro picture. Add what’s happening in China with their looming debt crisis, and there are a lot of things that could trigger a correction. It’s a little scary, something may come out of nowhere. A lot of companies could be caught in the outgoing tide, and we’ll see who’s caught swimming naked. But we could also see a scenario where the good times just keep rolling for another couple of years.
Favorite Quotes:
“What do you call somebody who is socially tolerant, internationally cautious, fiscally responsible and believes in free speech?”
“I don’t think these people get it. I mean we’re in the underdog business. We are giving checks to people with no money, no power, no connections, no nothing except a good idea. That is a huge creator of opportunity…”
