E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

26:48And so congratulations to the team over there. All right, biggest loser in business. The biggest loser is 20, 23. Freeberg, just so you know, last year, your prediction was capital intensive series BCs and D's of growth companies well done on that prediction, but give me freeburg your actual. Who was your biggest loser in 2023? Oh, Sultan of science. It's sort of tied up. Obviously, there's a tale to the effect, but it's VCs who deployed most of their capital in 2021. Obviously, it was the year where a venture capital deployment's peaked. And what I've heard from institutional peace this year is that, you know, not only will that vintage underperformed, but it could torpedo as many as 50 % of firms that are managing capital today in Silicon Valley.

27:37And it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to venture as an asset class significantly because of the torpedo that the 2021 vintage represents in performance. So that was my biggest loser for the year. Good for me and Sachs because we were diligent during that time. All right. Let's go to you, Sachs. Is your biggest loser in business in 2023? My biggest business loser is Disney. It seems that everyone has a good luck of Disney's business in 2023. I mean, all their majors, the actual releases, flopped and missed a conservative backlash against its woke social stances.

28:17You may recall that the actress who played Snow White in the remake accused Prince Charming of being a stalker. I mean, there's a million examples. Even their their Marvel franchise suddenly had bombs they had to fire Jonathan majors who was doing a fantastic job playing Kang and entire franchise arc because they're gonna have to reset now because of a criminal conviction involving him Disney plus descriptions fell off a cliff even a tenant set its theme parks declined dramatically because they charged way too much for families to visit and then finally Bob Eiger picked a fight with Elon Musk over advertising member Elon probably told Eiger to GF Why good for you.

28:57Yep. And tens of thousands of Disney plus subscribers canceled their subscriptions because of that. And it all makes you wonder if Iger now wishes he had stayed retired. I too picked Disney. I put Disney one of brothers. Both of them had their comic book franchises collapse simultaneously on the one of brothers side in the DC side, the flash and justice league. Everything came apart. Streaming was too expensive. And you didn't these horrific strikes that they had to deal with, and it feels like they had to give a ton of concession. So Disney was my biggest loser as well with one of brothers, as their little brother, they are Tramoth.

29:35We have a consensus there, rare consensus between Saxon. I, what did you have for your biggest loser in business? Well, you guys partially win, because I'm gonna have to agree with you guys, but I think the biggest loser in business was the go -woke community who tried to synthetically and artificially use all these social movements as a way to drive revenue and just got totally burned. So Disney, Bud, Target, and I think the statement from consumers is, look, just sell a product, stay in your lane, make a better and better product for us at lower and lower prices, and otherwise just let the politicians and the voters decide social issues.

30:22And I think that was pretty clear. All right, there you have it, folks. If you're going to make buttonlight, people just want to drink the damn beer. They're not interested in your politics. All right, here we go. Biggest business surprise of 2023. Who do you got, Sachs? Who is your biggest business surprise of 2023? I think it was the Fed's bank term funding program or BTFP in response to the collapse of Silicon Valley bank and the regional banking crisis. As you may recall, it wasn't just SVB. There were several old dominoes in the regional banking system that fell. It was SVB, signature first republic.

31:00And even in Europe, credit suites basically fell apart all because of the sudden spike in interest rates. A lot of people tried to blame VCs for this, J -Cal. Yeah, even when me took some heat. The truth is that if the dominoes had fallen in a slightly different order, no one would have thought to blame VCs for this. It was obviously the fact that rates had spiked up and these banks got caught off sides because their deposit base is volatile. They had loaded up on government bonds at a 1 % interest and then the value of those bonds plummeted. But the Fed then stepped in to prevent this from turning into a contagion.

31:40That was where the BTFP came in. And I'm ambivalent about it because I think that we don't know the long -term consequences of the Fed basically providing this liquidity to the banking system. However, it's very clear to me that there was a regional banking crisis underway and the Fed stepping in, I think, probably saved us from having a recession this year. Amazing. So the Fed there? I picked Facebook for my biggest surprise this year. They changed the name of the company to Year Sood to Metta. They were pouring tens of billions of dollars into VR which nobody wanted to use. The CEO was focused on the wrong thing, but they turned it around.

32:19The stock dropped to 90 and Zuckerberg, I guess, didn't want to lose. And so he laid off tens of thousands of employees, said, no more middle managers. Everybody's got to get to work. And they doubled down on their existing businesses and they've made some great progress on AI. So my biggest business surprise was the resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook. Tremoff, who did you have for your biggest business surprise? I'll pick Jay Powell and the Fed capitulation. I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for longer for quite a while now. And I was really surprised when Jay Powell had this press conference in December and early December and just basically capitulated and just said, you know what guys, we're going to be cutting probably three times next year.

33:09That was effectively the gist of what he said. And immediately the 10 year basically just completely changed course. And it went from almost at 5 % to below 4 % within a matter of two or a half or three weeks. So, and then the stock market has basically done nothing but goes straight up. That's a huge surprise to me because I think now what the setup is for 2024 is basically we will melt up up until the first cut and then they'll probably be some real selling. And I would not have predicted that. The markets have become a lot more accommodative as a result. I didn't expect that. So, J. Powell really, I think, surprised a lot of us.

33:55He could have been more tempered, but he did essentially decided to give away the playbook in the last month of the year here. And it's important for everybody to understand the Fed acts independently of the administration. It's just a coincidence, correct, SACs, that their cuts are going to come just in time for Biden economics. And if it happens to go up in the next nine months, that has nothing to do with the Biden administration. Who might benefit from that if the economy will respond? Jason Nick, I have a quote that I sent Nick. This was what Larry Summers said, and I just think it's such an unbelievable quote that is just worth internalizing.

34:33If you just start reading here, so I prefer the Volcro Green span approach, which is to recognize that the Fed is a little bit like the Delphic oracles. People regarded them as omniscient and omnipotent, but they were in fact neither. So the Oracle has kept their pronouncements vague and oracular, not concrete and specific because it was impossible to be concrete and specific without being wrong frequently and undercut credibility. Sure. I mean, that is just the perfect... Keep it general. Yeah. Keep it summary of what probably should have happened in these pressors. And this was an example where it was the exact opposite and the market just took it and said, I'm off to the races.

35:10Just to agree with that, I'm buttress it. But it's not only the fact that they gave this kind of this year, as you remember, back when we started having inflation, the Fed still stuck to the story that it would not be raising rates for some extended period of time. And a lot of these banks that had problems, basically, because they bought too many long -term government bonds, a lot of those bonds were bought during that period when the Fed was assuring him it wasn't going to be jacking up rates. So if the Fed hadn't misled them, maybe they would have made better risk decisions. Yeah. So it works both ways.

35:44Freeberg, get a business surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the Bestie Awards. The biggest surprise was Sam Altman's Alster in return all in a weekend. That was kind of crazy. So I'd just give it to that. Nothing else to be said. Okay, the flip flop. Love it. Okay, best science breakthrough. This is everybody's favorite. Also the time when Sacks goes and takes a leak. 2023, biggest science breakthrough. I've got one. You got to Sacks? You're awake during the Sacks. I got one. Second we got it. What's the biggest science breakthrough for you, Sacks? Well, according to NASA, there's a new look at Uranus.

36:14That's right, Jacob. That's right, Jacob. These are never before seen deep penetrating shots of Uranus. How deep penetrating are these? Very deep, very penetrating from the James Webb Space Telescope. Freeberg, when your anus gets probed this deeply, what's your takeaway? What's the feeling you get in this deep probing of Uranus? Oh, wonder. Mystery. Oh, I wonder. Well, that's a space calledoscopy. Something gets moved with it. Absolutely. I'm going to save you for last re -brok. Tremoth, you have one? Yeah, I think that this unfortunately did not get nearly the attention it deserves, but I'm going to pick the CRISPR FDA approved CRISPR treatment of sickle cell anemia.

37:00I think that this is just an incredibly important breakthrough. through. And so, you know, sickle cell basically is just the condition where the shape of your red blood cells change. It causes a lot of very painful inflammation and damage. Disproportionally affects the black population, African American population. And so now there's an approved therapy, which goes in and makes the gene edits and fixes these folks. So congratulations to Vertex and CRISPR. And I think it's just incredible. There was my big breakthrough, was this brain decoder technology. We didn't talk about it here on the show, but this project was crazy.

37:36They did MRI scans or F MRI scans of blood flow to different areas in the brain. They then had people listen to podcasts like the month, and they tracked individuals' brain activity with specific words that were said during the podcast, then they had the repeat words. then they attached it to a language model, GPT -1, I believe, and narrowed down what people were thinking. Then they had people think thoughts, and it started to use the predictive model of GPT -1 and combined it with what was happening in their brain chemistry. Now, this is a far away from being able to read people's minds, but for somebody who couldn't speak, let's say, the idea that you could think and then have your thoughts, and the story you were telling actually come out of a computer just by thinking would B.

38:24Miraculous obviously neural link does this with the direct connection. But facetic right now. Sex still thinking about your anus. He's he's going deep into your anus right now. He's reading that paper. I can see it in his eyes. You guys know I got a colonoscopy. Thank goodness. How was it? I got a diaddon. Did they put you under Tuesday? Yeah, but I got I didn't get the propa fall. I got Demarol. I think Demarol. Oh, you got to go pro I had like the fly lights sedation. Just kind of like you know, it was great. Don't get me wrong, but it was like 15, 20 minutes. Like it was not. But you were kind of awake and lucid while they were halfway through.

39:00You woke up half right through. Yeah. Huh? Did they give you a drink, a little red wine or anything? Nothing. No, it didn't talk to me. No, I just saw that I saw the screen. I was like, what the earth? And then I just went back to sleep. Let me tell you a propa fall. It's drip, drip, drip. And then you wake up four hours later. It's the most restful sleep you ever had. No, dude, I had a Maybe it's maybe some hour. Yeah. Yeah. I had like a 20 minute file I saidation That was it I asked them to go back up in there twice just to make sure Freeberg Enough about your ines. What was your biggest science surprise of 23?

39:36I know it's hard to surprise you I know you guys want to hear some crazy specific thing, but I actually just said that there were too many breakthroughs with Machine -learn models with AI this year to list LLMs that can run on small desktop machines that are open source that outperform all models that were in existence even a few months prior. It highlights the leaps and bounds of this trajectory of development in models. There's other specific examples that we talked about DeepMind's Graphcast model, which is a GraphNural network on the show. And obviously all the generative models and imagery and movies and music, but it's just such an extraordinary time to see us leverage our combined capabilities to drive these extraordinary.

40:19So your surprise is the pace of language models or the pace of AI development? Just all these breakthroughs in aggregate. I mean, I think it's hard to pay attention to anyone. There's a constellation of change underway. It's incredible. Yeah. Okay. Now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan. Who is your biggest flash in the pan, Tramoff? Oh my gosh. This is a... Well, I'll tell you what it could be. business, it could be society, it could be pop culture. I wrote down SBF. Okay. I think like from what looked like it too good to be Wonder Kind, frankly, just turned out to be an Adderall addicted grifter.

40:54You're a great user. Yeah. Saks, I hope that doesn't hit too close to home. Who is yours? Same ballpark. I said effective altruism that you know, you've meant to get big hit with the SBF. I would have thought that'd be enough to polish it off. But then we had the open AI board, Alst, Sam Altman, like we talked about, apparently that was driven by a couple of their nonprofit board members who were effective altruists. I think the failure of that whole debacle will put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement. Okay. Freeberg, you got a flash in the pan for 23. The obvious breakthrough in superconducting room temperature material, LK99.

41:39It came in and went. Everyone thought it was going to change the world. A couple of weeks later, it couldn't be replicated, was disproven ultimately. And for a hot minute there, everyone thought the world was going to change. So super exciting to see room temperature, super conductivity and the search for room temperature, superconducting materials get so much attention. As I mentioned, it's something I've thought a lot about since I was 13 years old. So it's super cool, but didn't happen. Came in and went, I went with a wildcard here. I said George Sanctos, the Diva drama queen and congressman who slayed from 2023 to 2023.

42:14And he's an electric campaign funds divide. He's not a good close and get both Botox. So he asked Queen and Sephora and so on. I'm bad. I'm bad. That's queen. Just making bank over at Cameo. Gonna have him come in. He's gonna do a quick cameo here on all in pockets. All right. Best CEO. You're best CEO. Best CEO. I'll go first. I'll go first. I haven't got first yet. I picked a wild card here. I went tell or sweat. Four billion dollars in revenue from the tour and the merchandise and the movie and everything. Each course stop generates $90 million for the city she lands in. She's getting 85%. She went direct to movie theaters with that concert movie and made a quarter billion dollars.

43:02She stands down. The best CEO of 2023 for me. We got you. Something to do. CEO of Microsoft. I just think the gross tonnage of market cap dollars he added in 2023 plus figuring out how to close Activision. plus retaining maximum optionality with OpenAI is just the master class in head -down management. Well done. Sax, who do you got? I have Jensen Wang, CEO of Nvidia and King of the GPU. We talked about the magnificent 7 but none was more magnificent than Nvidia who stock is up to 135 % and earnings and forecast Cass keep going doors off. Jensen has been planning this moment for many years before the whole AI frenzy took hold.

43:54And Vitya is now repeating the benefit of that. Who do you got? Friedberg. I give it to Sam Altman because I don't think any individual has generated more attention on a private company and its effect on the world and the future than Sam Altman and OpenAI. And I think that he's been aggressive in raising capital. this guy can raise like he can raise. And then he overbets on people. He finds talent. He gives them extraordinary compactages, gets them to come and work on this extraordinary effort and then gets them to deliver results. He pushes the limits, he pushes the boundaries, even beyond what's comfortable for his board members.

44:32Clearly, you know, that comes with the good and the bad. And then even after he got ousted by his board, his entire employee based through a crew and got him back and sure everyone's got their economic motivations to see that happen, but I still think that the setup was largely his work. So he does deserve credit for that. So all in, I think it's an incredible year for Sam Alman. Now we move on to 2023 Best Investor, Traumap. Who was your best investor for 2023 here at the Best of Awards? It was a continuation of the last couple of years, but it's the Pod shops and specifically Citadel. So I give that award to Ken Griffin.

45:10Pod shops, I think, have really become the hallway bully of the public capital markets and Citadel is the kingpin. They returned $7 billion to their investors in 23. I think if you go back since 2020, they've returned more than 20 billion. They generated 15 % very steady returns uncorrelated to the market. It's just a machine. I mean, it's incredible. It's an incredible business that he's built. So he is, there's nobody close. Saxony, yeah. I've got Bill Ackman here for timing the bond market perfectly. He shorted bonds for most of the year, making hundreds of millions of dollars. And then on October 23rd, he announced that he was covering his positions and that it was too risky to stay short in bonds and he was going long.

45:58And that very day was the high point of the 10 -year bond yield. The market made a bottom on October 27th since then yields plummeted, which means that the value bonds is short. and the best part of it is that Ackman is using his new FU money to take on Ivy League University presidents for their work, DEI, double standards, grifting and plagiarism. Well done. Alright. Free Berkeley, yeah. I also said Ackman for his timing on the Treasury trade. I was right there with you guys, except I wanted to go with the wild card. I am astounded by the growth of TikTok, but I just worked backwards. Arthur Danchick, who I've never met from Cess Quahana, an international group referred to as SIG and the industry still owns according to sources, 15 % of this company which could be worth three, four, 500 billion dollars when it goes out and despite all the saber -rattling, the CCP has not divested from it even though Trump and Biden both said they were gonna try to do that and by dance was caught as buying an American journalist using their TikTok data.

47:01So the fact that that investment is still in place to me is extraordinary. So congratulations to them, but I had solid quick. All right, now we move on. Woman quickly here. 2023. Best churn around. Who's your best churn around, Shema? This was like three years in the making, but I'll give it to Novo Nordisk. I think the amount of attention that Novo has gotten for a Zempick, Wagovie, and Rybelsis in 2023 was incredible. But you have to go back to the last decade where the first five years, there was just not much activity. and they had to maintain their investment, stay strong, stay focused, and then starting in about 2019, the stock has been about a four or five X in the last four or five years.

47:44And I think these semi -gluetide GLP ones are here to stay. They're transformational on society. So that was an enormous task of corporate focus. So I'll give the turnaround the word to Nova Nordisk. Sax, what do you got? In light of what's happening right now in the crypto markets, I'm gonna go with Solana. Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. At the beginning of the year, about $9 a token. It's now at 92 as of this moment. Obviously, it's very volatile, but it's up roughly 10X this year to date. And in light of the fact that various unscrupulous actors on the internet accuse some of us of buying slanted at a discount and dumping it on retail without any evidence and that wasn't true.

48:33Let's just say that those of us who are still holding bags of slanted are very happy campers right now. Oh, that's all there. That's all there for the win. Freeberg, who do you got? Biggest business turn around. I give it to Dara and Uber when he took over that business, I think it was a $8 -9 billion $2 .2 million net loss in 2019, $5 billion, but I'll run right right now, incredible forecasting, incredible skill in forecasting the sensitivities in that business, by the way. Same more. Same more. And obviously he's seen the market cap just this year grow from 50 billion to 126 billion as of today.

49:11So give it to Dara for the big turnaround. Product sucks though. I will say it's got an expensive card to get an Uber, sit around and wait forever. So Dara, please fix that. Otherwise, good job. Well done. I went with one that you guys gave a words to and all the previous words. Sam Waltman is all over the shares besties. I thought going from being fired for malfeasance to becoming a martyr and then I'm the captain now. You can throw in the I'm the captain now meme right here, Nick, for the pod. In about 10 days, he captured three full new cycles, was named CEO of the year and the palace intrigue, raising money for an Nvidia killer in the Middle East.

49:52I mean, this guy is like James Bond plus a CEO. So what a great turnaround from fired to desired Sam Altman. All right. Let's go to our next one here. 2023, the worst company of the year. This is the company that is low, some in horrible in our opinions. And that's that's all it is folks. It's just four dudes opinions. in your opinion, what was the worst company of 2023? I'm gonna go with Pfizer. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an exposé on the inner turmoil at Pfizer as its market cap has lost $140 billion in valuation in 2023. By the way, that headline is ridiculous. Pfizer did not save the world.

50:37The reason why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for Pax Lovid and for COVID boosters. Apparently, people do not see the value in those products. They finally figured it out. I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines. The CEO Albert Burla was confronted in Davos by assistant journalists for this lack of transparency back in January of this year. And what's interesting is that if you read the Wall Street Journal piece, even his own employees are questioning Burles' candor when he announced on a company -wide virtual town hall that the company was embarking on a cost -cutting effort.

51:24The chatroom erupted in snark. Quote, future is bright, but you might get fired as how one employee characterizes Burles' spin. This led another employee to our plie quote dumpster fires are always bright. All right, Friedberg, worst company of 2023 for you. You have a worst company? Must I love some? I do. I'm going to get through this without getting interrupted. The worst company of 2023 is Mu Yuan food stuff. This company is pure evil. It's got 137 ,000 employees. It's based in China. It's the world's largest slaughterer of pigs. Slaughter is 2 .1 million pigs per year. With the world's largest pig farm, they're nannying.

52:04Where they basically take pigs from birth and breed them all the way through to slaughter. During their entire lives, these pigs never get to move more than a few inches. They live in these multi -story housing units that they never get to see sun or the light from the outside. Through their whole lives, they're kept separate from their families. Pigs are as smart as most dogs and even young children. and at the end of their very painful, awful existence is they're slaughtered and fed to a growing population. China consumes over a billion pigs a year. It's a horrific situation. So that's the most loathsome company of 2023.

52:43Sounds delicious. I'm sorry, guys. Dude, you went off camera, man. You, you, you went off camera. No, Jake. You, you started laughing. It's not fun. You laughing. That's why I started laughing. I mean, I had 15 jokes, but I'm not going to make any of them. Yeah, I wouldn't have a surfer factory farming. It's hard. Who is your worst company, Trimoff? Come on, Trimoff. Get in the game, you're. Who is your worst company? It's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank. Hmm. One stole customer accounts, and the other one just was run by a CEO when a risk management infrastructure that really imperiled and almost imperiled in entire industry.

53:24There you go. For me, it was Fox News. They deceived their loyal customers by knowingly spreading fake news about voting machines that wound up firing their most loved host in our fifth bestie, Tucker Carlson, and they paid record -setting fines for misleading the public and creating massive division in our country. And they're facing an even bigger lawsuit, a $2 .7 billion dollar lawsuit with another election technology company that will happen in 2025. Pension funds are now suing this low -sum company because they'll lost so much money for them. So my worst company of the year is Fox News. All right, actually, I'm just saying I'm sorry, so you're going for the microphone there.

54:09I'm not going to defend Fox after they fire Tucker. Exactly. Exactly. That's why I put it in there for you. I do think the judgment's the magnitude to the judgments are ridiculous. Okay, now it's time. We have a little bit of fun here. Best meme. You're best meme. Fun stuff. I'll start it off this year. I love the Boston cop on a slide. I don't know if you guys have seen this one, but it went super viral. They've made millions of versions of it. This is the cop in Boston. Going down a slide.

54:42And the backstory here. But, Jacob's were told there's a slide that's too dangerous in Boston. One of them tried to do their duty and confirm that it was in fact dangerous and he got injured coming down the slide. And now, anytime something is going off the track, whether it's a market or a company, you play that clip. Sax, you're a master of memes. What do you got for us this year in the 2023 Bestie Awards? Well, I think the meme of the year had to be the GFY. He wants answer to Bob Eiger's attempt to blackmail him Nick, but we need to see this in the gift version the way the hand motions are it's This then this and then it comes back in good for you conductor of an orchestra Just a standard good for you.

55:29Jamal. Did you have a Did you have a favorite Jamal a favorite meme of 2023? Yeah, Nick if you want to just throw it up there I'm a journalist and it's a kid Yeah, it's a major journalism. I'm sure. What what is this talking about? I think it's it's what we all know. And I think it was further exposed this year, just the the brazen naked ambition and corrupt nature of the mainstream media. Jason, you said it really well. And I and I really made an impact on me. So I want to give you credit. We are all citizen journalists, investigative journalists now. And I think that that's true. I think we all have a responsibility to Pick the information source and to that yeah, I never been more true than this You got to have multiple sources triangulate the true through yourself But yeah, I wouldn't trust the mainstream media at this point, you know as but one of many sources freeberg get a favorite meme Got a favorite meme.

56:31No, I didn't put anything on this Okay, you gave us six minutes on pigs being killed, but you can't come up with one meme. Okay Yeah, come on with the meme. Come on, man. I think it's kind of funny actually. It's kind of funny. As no meme is meme. I have a meme. Wait, we need to play the white way of music. Where? All right, best new tack, best new tack. We got to keep things moving. Last year it was fusion and GPT across the board. This year I'll just get a mind out of the way real quick. I'm going to go with something more specific. Chad GPT's app has been extraordinary. It now has 4 .0 in it.

57:06It has Dolly in it. I've been making incredible images to go with my, my sub stack and my blog posts. That I would have paid thousands of dollars, for each one of those when I was doing magazines and they have voice chat. If you haven't connected, ChatGBT's voice app to the new action button on the iPhone 15, there's a button above your volume called Action. You can map it to a specific feature inside of any app. I mapped it to voice chat on ChatGBT. When I'm driving with my kids, they have a question, we put it in and we just started asking questions about history, science, whatever it happens to be pop culture, music, two chat, CBT4 and it is an extraordinary breakthrough app and it's been downloaded.

57:50I think hundreds of millions of times now or over a hundred million incredible, incredible progress there. Chimap, you got a best tech? Best new tech? I don't think there was anything meaningful in 2023. I think there was a lot of improvements to things that were founded and started in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 Nothing knew that cup. Yeah, this year. Sax I have Starlink for JetSuiteX. I of course I've never used it, but I heard it's great But if you do fly with other humans who you don't know I'm looking forward to Starlink for private aviation as well But I've heard it's a real game changer on commercial flights and every kind of flight.

58:32Freeber. Best new tech. My best new tech of this year, I think, is really important as we race to keep the promise of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation, which is open source locally run LLMs. So you can take an LLM and you can run it on your machine. You don't have to be connected to the internet. You don't have to have a third -party service provider making a LLM available to you. And so this allows the continued development and pursuit of productivity gains and new capabilities that emerge from these LLMs by making them local offline, disconnected from the internet, and away from the screwability of agencies that want to check your model and make sure it's okay.

59:21So this is really important to me. I do think, by broader trend right now, is I think that there's this really scary big shift of, you're either going to end up in a new enlightenment or you're going to end up in a new dark ages. And I think we're seeing this play out in all these conflicts around the world, in all of this regulation and all of the technology that's being deemed either a threat or an opportunity. And so I think any technology capability that allows us to pursue the enlightenment is a winner for me. So anyway, this was a big shift that happened this year. There's multiple models that are publicly available that are free open source.

59:56You can run. Okay, 2023 best trend. What was the best trend 2023 for you? I actually didn't really couldn't figure one out. Okay, SACS, you got a best trend for 2023. Something that happened often it became a trend. My best trend is the return of colorblindness as the standard and the pushback on DEI. We already talked about the University presidents and what Bill Akman is doing. I would add to that that the Supreme Court banned race -based affirmative action in University of Michigan in June. And Red State Governor was like Reg Abbott and Ron DeSantis took that as a green light to shut down DEI programs in their public colleges and universities.

1:00:37I think that this is a good trend and hopefully it continues next year because America should be a colorblind meritocracy. free bird. What was your best trend of 2023? The profitability focus at young companies, particularly in an age of AI, Copilot tools for software development. From what I've seen, it's pretty incredible. In single -person efforts can yield what historically is required six, twelve or more people to do using Copilot tools in AI. So software development is accelerated, new products, and entire companies can be built by single individual at very low cost building totally customized software.

1:01:17So from what I've seen, it's not widely adopted. These capabilities, as you guys probably have seen as well, it's starting to be. But just imagine once the majority of people are using these co -piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools, it's really going to increase productivity globally as it finds its way into every business and everyone can become an entrepreneur and so on. So it's incredible to see. I2Sax was looking at the issue of DEI and I framed mine as DEI dying in meritocracy thriving. That was the best trend for me. So we are once again, Sympathico, you and I, DEI dying in meritocracy thriving.

1:01:54Nicely done. You really are proving you're a centrist. Yeah, I mean, I think, or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought that seems like the most logical thing to do. Yeah, you're right. Absolutely. 100%. 100%. 100%. We figured this out some time ago. Yeah, I don't know why we have to rehash it. Okay, 2023, worst trend. Outly did off. I had three here of worst trends. Number one, anti -Semitism, absolutely disgusting and horrible. Two, Trump's rehabilitation. We'll just leave it at that. And then three, people of low moral character using the freedom of speech movement to whitewash their horrible personal behavior you have some talking about.

1:02:31Alex Jones to all the mids in the comments. Sax, what was the worst trend for you? You had to have three didn't you? Well, I'm gonna go with anti -Semitism. Those are my two runners. Two runners. All right, fair enough. Yeah. I think you guys are like my worst trend. It is the metastasizing national debt. This chart really makes it clear. You can see here the national debt as a function of deficit and revenues and it's a upside -down hockey stick. Jesus. If a company could produce user growth that looked like this, I would invest all day long. However, this is not growth. This is basically how much we owe.

1:03:08And it is a bipartisan problem. It's been going on for really 20 plus years, but it is getting worse and worse under Biden. Yeah. 8 trillion added to the deficit under Trump and looks like five to six trillion under Biden. Well, you know, we did have a COVID. We did have felt down where the economy was down 30 % year over year. So the tax -fascade COVID, yeah. Both parties supported that bailout and in hindsight it was excessive. Yeah. Biden's quote unquote stimulus was passed on straight party lines after COVID was ready over. Yeah. So I think we should just make sure to apportion the blame correctly.

1:03:45But like I said, bipartisan problem. Yeah, I agree. Bipoderson and Trump did a very ill -timed tax cut before COVID. So it was a double hit. If you want to compare it in eight years, Obama added eight trillion. So it was one trillion a year. these new guys getting close to 2 trillion per year. So they doubled the velocity of spending just completely disastrous. Chama, what's the worst trend for you? I just think it's the general state of affairs amongst our young people, our 20 -year -olds and our 30 -year -olds, I think are really struggling. And it's gotten worse. I'll give you two examples.

1:04:26here you see on your screen, this year, 158 ,000 more Americans died than expected, which is more than all the wars combined in Vietnam. And when you look at where those death rates are, those death rates were coming from 35 to 44 year olds, which was up 26 % and 25 to 34 year olds, which was up 20 % about pre -COVID levels. And all we can point to from the government establishment is that it's smoking at a bad diet, which doesn't really hang together. And then the second trend is when you look at just general marriage rates amongst these same cohort of people, it's meaningfully worse than every cohort above it.

1:05:05So just, societally, these folks are not tracking. In whatever dimension you want to measure, sort of like happiness, volumance, stability, safety, something is meaningfully wrong in these cohorts of people. and we owe it to them to figure it out. The one thing you missed there, at your mouth and the Western world, at least 36 % increase in suicide over the past two decades. So a lot of this is, it's another one. So that might be the main one I think in this is the mental health issues are acute. Okay, we have Friedberg Ural Act for the worst trend, the best of the award for worst trend of 2023.

1:05:40What do you got? I don't know, I had one, I'm gonna change it on the fly. Oh, I'm gonna go with the normalization of spending. I think it's probably the worst trend. And like it's, you know, it used to be a big deal. Remember when the TAR program happened in08, and it was an incredible single line item of $800 billion to support the troubled asset relief effort to try and keep the economy stable by buying up all of this failing debt and supporting all of these equities and keeping these businesses going. And now it's like $100 billion for HITS, really and for that, But it's like we've normalized spending and COVID just made it worse.

1:06:19So, to your guys' point earlier about the acceleration of spending. Once you spend a dollar, you think it's okay to spend a dollar. And then next time you spend two, it's not that bad. It's only a dollar more. And then next time you spend five, it's only three bucks more. And suddenly, it becomes normal. And this normalization catches up to us. I've harped on this enough, so I won't go into it too much. But I mean, that's the worst threat. Who did you change from? What was your original? My original was the merging of the oppressor oppressed ideologies. that are in diametric opposition to each other.

1:06:48I just found this more ironic than the worst trend, I think, which is like LGBTQ groups that were pro -Hamas, that were marching and supporting Hamas, which is anti -LGBTQ. It was just so mind -blowing to me to see some of the behavior over the last couple of months that made absolutely no sense. And it shows how little first principles thinking people are actually doing about the things that they're standing up for. Standing up for a free Palestine is one kind of point, but being pro -Hamas, when Hamas would have a responsibility of eradicating people like you, it's just nuts to me. So there's just some of the stuff that I've seen where the oppressor, oppressed ideology is trained to fit everything, even if it makes absolutely, in no sense.

1:07:40Yes. So it's just really frustrating to see. Okay. Now we go on to a little casual, the best of the awards for 2023 favorite media, favorite media, new things that came out in the media could be a video game, book, music, or a TV show. I'll leave us off here, just get it out of the way real quick. For me, the Sessession finale, extraordinary, one of the best pieces of television ever made. And my sleeper was the bear season two, very niche show on FX. I think I turned a lot of you on to it. And season two had an episode, episode five, which is the Forks episode, in which Cammy sends Richie to intern at a very elite restaurant, and he's charged with polishing silverware and Garrett and him get into it.

1:08:24Why am I doing all this stupid stuff? And he just I tell them, listen, every day here is a freaking Super Bowl. And it's just a great, great, amazing episode of Tyler's with extraordinary performances and writing, Chimoff. Did you have any favorite media this year? Anything that Taylor Swift did this year was? Whitehunt. Here are Swiftie. She is a tour de force. She's incredible. And she's a genius. What can you say? Nothing serious. Thanks. How many use my spot to draw attention to some podcasts that you may not have heard of? Some geopolitics in World Affairs podcasts. So that probably my number one is the Duran with Alexander McQurris and Alex Christopher Oro.

1:09:11I'd also give honorable mention to Judge Napolitano's podcast and Colonel Daniel Davis. I have found these three podcasts to be quite useful in understanding what's happening in the rest of the world. and I found they were reporting an analysis to be more accurate than anything you're getting in the mainstream media. Freebreak, any favorite media for you as we get close to wrapping here? I recently read a book that I liked. I don't know if I talked about it called the Idea Factory on the History of Bell Labs and the Grace of American Innovation. Strongly recommended. I had no idea how much this Bell Labs institution touched modern life from radar to the transistor to the nuclear bomb, to computing, even information theory was developed inside of Bell Labs.

1:09:57It was an incredible organization that took its roots in an institutionalized monopoly, which then enabled them to have one customer that was always a built -in customer, but gave them the freedom and the resources to build all of these great things. And for anyone that wants to say that monopolies, stifle innovation, I encourage you to read this book because it really says the opposite may be true, that a monopoly enables investment in long -term thinking and long -term ideas that you can never otherwise see. So I give it to that. I also had a softer one. Have you guys ever watched Bobby Altoff's podcast?

1:10:30I found this so funny this year. Have you guys ever seen it? Her interview with Drake is hilarious. It's so funny. So she interviewed Drake. She's interviewed Cuban. She interviewed Chad. Oh, yeah, I know we were talking about the deadpan. Yeah, the deadpan. So she's got this like holy, disinterested persona. And it totally encapsulates like a Gen Z, be like a personality in a way that you don't get in any other media. It's really, and she's hilarious when she does these interviews. And she's very unique, like an Andy Kaufman or Jim Carey, like in that sense, like unique and how she does this.

1:11:00I just think like we'll see if the stick laughs, like she may end up kind of being tired soon and see if she has a second act. But the Drake interview was really good. The one with Cuban had two problems with it. One, they sat on the ground and then two, Cuban's feet were really dirty. Did you see the one with Shaq? And so I was like, bro, like, yeah. Just keep the shoes on and just the shack one was hilarious, but anyway, she's she's got great contents It's it's hit or miss by the way I'll also say it's not consistent hit or miss, but I don't know I just found her to be a little bit of a a unique standout in In content this year everyone's kind of me to me to look the same.

1:11:34She she's stood out of it for me In that vein have you seen z -way? ZI w e No, she is a woman who interviews people and then she asks people very uncomfortable questions about race like how many black friends you have, name them. And it is hilarious. It is like the greatest bit ever. Shout out to Z -Way. Z -Way. Since we went there on, who's seeing it? You Sarajima? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're on TikTok, you'll see it because she just had like, yeah, she just has anybody in pop culture. She had the George Santos on. She had George Santos on. Wow. And it was just so incredible. Crazy. on the podcasting front, shout out to our friend, Gwen of the pow tro.

1:12:18If you don't listen to the goo podcast, she does like interviews every other time. Really good. Red scare, another great alternative podcast I'd like to listen to from the dirt bag left as they call it and shout out pre -bararras cafe insider cafe .com. All right. I think is this the end producer neck? Are we here? Did we make it last one? Last one. We have a special award here, the Self -Emilation Award. This has been named after Rudy Giuliani. So Rudy Giuliani Self -Emilation Award. And this is a tough one to give this year, Sacks. What do you have? Because there's going to be quite some repressural here.

1:12:59Go. I am going to name Liz McGill, the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania. who had been vomiting on herself for two months in the aftermath of October 7th. Of course, even appeared at that congressional hearing with the presence of Harvard and MIT. She answered what was clearly a moral question with a tone deaf legalistic answer, saying that advocacy of genocide against Jews depends on context, falls into question whether one is smart enough to be a university president. It's not a job that demands that much intelligence, but it does require an instinct for knowing when and how to cover your own ass when she was finally forced to step down.

1:13:39It felt like a mercy killing. Yeah. Was she the one smirking too? Yeah. She had the aqua smirking. That was what I found the most appalling was the aqua smirks. Yep. Chimath, who lit themselves on fire most of all this year? Who poured gasoline over their heads and just lit up a stogie? I think it's the brand and reputation of the ivy's. I think that there was irreparable harm. Well done. Yes. We've had generations now that have been taught that that is where we send our best and brightest kids. But it turns out that they're getting indoctrinated into some very kind of extreme rhetoric that then produces these incapable first principles thinkers that will be the destruction of our society if we don't fix it.

1:14:24So I think Harvard applications were down 17 percent already. I expect that trend across the IVs to go way up. I expect contributions to go down. I expect governments to ratchet down their spending in those schools. And I expect some folks to try to take away their non -profit status. So I think that we are going to reallocate the brand equity of the IVs to good schools. And we will know what the good schools are based on their independence, their ability to shurn out first principles thinkers and their respect for freedom of speech without being moral idiots. Friedberg. What do you got? Well, Sanctima.

1:15:16Ivy League presidents. Okay. Well done. No need to add too much more there, I guess. You know, I was torn here between the namesake of this very award. If you missed it, Rudy Giuliani had a $150 million judgment against him maybe two weeks ago for slandering two poor innocent people in his electoral scam that he ran with Trump. I think he's going to get indicted next year for these fake electorates. So, follow the fake electorates one. But that was a close one for me because Kanye West also lit himself on fire the past year with the Adidas contract and his anti -Semitism getting kicked off Twitter acts, but I feel like that was mental illness.

1:15:56And I think Rudy Giuliani is just stupid. So I give it to Rudy Giuliani, the namesake of this award. And I hope. Yeah. I'm not going to defend him or his actions at all. No, I do think I do think that judgment was excessive. And it's part of a pattern of ridiculous judgments that we see when you have, for example, a DC jury pool judging a conservative or a Republican who's politics they disagree with. The plaintiffs only ask for $48 million. The jury awarded three times that. It's an excessive award. I think a few million dollars as a penalty would have been a perfectly nice award. I think to bankrupt the man, which is what you're talking about, is becoming a bit of a pylon.

1:16:43And I'm all in favor of Rudy being the butt of jokes until the point where really you're talking about destroying his life, I think it's gone way too far. Yeah, these are words are curious and how large they are. They all get appealed though and they all come down. So I'm sure that'll come down by some massive percentage in the near future. This has been the year end episode. Can you believe it? We made it another year, guys. Here we are at the end of 2023. Well, do our predictions next week. So you'll get our amazing predictions for 2024 in the next episode, any closing thoughts on the year we just had free Burke.

1:17:20How are you feeling here at the end of the year? Are you hopeful? Are you sure? Are you sad? Are you excited? I've been up since 5 a .m. and I just drank beers so I'm pretty tired. But with respect, that's kind of how the whole year feels actually feel like I exhausted. Yeah, I just got up early, cranked through the day, had some beer and I'm I'm ready for a nap, but I'm probably more optimistic going into 2024 than I was going into 2023 because that's on a personal basis. And I think, yeah, there's just a lot going on today in the world. Yeah, it's complex isn't it? I do think as long as we embrace the enlightenment and don't embrace the dark ages, we stand a shot at keeping progress alive.

1:18:04And I think that's the defining characteristics of human civilization is progress and That's I think ultimately resolves all the conflicts and other things. We just got to keep it alive Well, so Chimath how are you feeling here as we wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024? I think 2022 and 2023 have been Looking back the most important two years of my professional career I think I benefited like we all I think all four of us could say this of just an increase incredible set of tailwinds and 22 and 23 for the first time where I was in a position of influence and capital and power where I had to confront that those tailwinds can quickly become headwinds and that we are not impervious to them.

1:18:50So I like 3rdburg and looking forward to 24 where I can try to put all these learnings to good use. So it's been generally good. Yeah. And 23 was the most important year of my life in the sense that I got remarried. So that's been a huge personal highlight. Yes, beautiful. Love that you guys all came to that as well as a highlight for us too. Absolutely beautiful. Yeah, I'm ready to I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start 24. Sacks and closing dots here. Well, I think one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we did number a session. I mean, I think most people were betting on a recession in 23.

1:19:24They thought that a soft landing would be almost impossible. And in fact, the data that soft landings almost never occur. remember what Larry Summers said to us at our all -in -summit this year, which is soft landings or like second marriages. It's the triumph of hope over experience, meaning they almost never happened. And so the fact that we didn't get that, I think that was basically a pretty important bullet dodge. Now that being said, I do think that the whole B2B software industry definitely went through a recession. But fortunately, I think we bottomed out and are starting to see green shoots now, so things are returning to normal.

1:20:00on the global stage, things are still okay in the sense that the US is not directly in a war, but man, it is pretty scary. We could be pulled into... It's pretty dynamic, pretty dynamic. It's very dynamic. We pulled into a war in the Middle East anytime. We still have a proxy war going in Ukraine. So there are a lot of risks still on the horizon. I'll just say for the gentleman, for the audience, it has been wonderful to have all of you, the audience, the fans of the show, and you besties in my life. over two really tough years. It was also for a proud of myself going into them. I knew I was built for war and it was a war the last few years.

1:20:37It was difficult, it was hard. But we all, I think learned a lot and came out stronger because of it. And I just wanna give a particular shout out to all of you guys for making this brand extraordinary and taking it to new heights. Almost all the times I've built things, brands, engage it, slow -knit reporter, haul in, whatever it is. It was a solo effort. And it's just been really rewarding to be part of a team and I want to just give a particular note to Freeberg who I think all of us owe a real debt of gratitude towards he took the all -in summit Which was a very strong start in 2022 and he leveled it up in 2023 Amazingly and I'm just so excited to see what we do in 2024 with this amazing brand memberships To kill us another 50 episode and a great All -in -Summit next year, I hope so share out to my guy free bird.

1:21:30For the dictator, the Sultan of science, chairman dictator, sorry, apologize for getting that. We'll get it right. Chairman dictator. And the Rayman David Sacks, I am the world's greatest moderator and we will see you in 2024. Bye bye. Happy New Year. Love you guys. New Year, bitches. Bye bye. Have you guys seen? What's this? A light -and -sleeve? Well, let your winners ride. Rainman, David Saft. What's up, I'm going on, me. And it says, we open -source it to the fans and they've just got crazy with her. I'm going on, me. I'm going on. What's up, I'm going on. I'm going on. What's up, I'm going on.

1:22:08What's up, I'm going on. What's up, I'm going on. Besties are gone. I'm going on. That's my dog taking it away. I wish you're driving away, you said. We're going on. Oh, man. My ham is the actual meaty, I feel like. So we should all just get a room and just have one big hug, or because they're all just like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release that out. What, you're the beef? What, you're the beef? Where are we? What? What's the good food? We need to get买 cheese aren't we? I'm doing all this. What? What? I'm doing all this. What? I'm doing all this.