What Travis Kalanick Taught Bradley Tusk, & Why He Closed His VC Fund

26:31Is it the product of, oh, here's this technology that before just wasn't available to me and therefore it made impossible, or you make choices, right? And the choices you make, which by the way, include all kinds of sacrifices, right? You know, we were talking before the podcast about like, you live in LA, I hope you're secure or anything like that. And like, it's a pain in the ass street because you're working in New York and San Francisco, right? But like, at the end of the day, we make choices and the choices facilitate what you can then do, right? Like for example, I spent a ton of money on my team because everything that I don't want to do and don't have to do, I don't do.

27:09Yeah. And that frees me up to do all the things that I do want to do. And that's why I have like multiple companies and a foundation and all kinds of other stuff, because in part, I pay other people to do a lot of things for me. What does that mean? I have less money at the end of the day, right but i made that choice so do you buy the notion that it's technology or is it really fundamentally just about your choices no i think it's absolutely choices like i choose to work really hard because i like working really hard and i also have this like moment in time where there's so much momentum that i am taking opportunity right i do know that i'm making so many sacrifices i'm making sacrifices to friends i'm constantly letting them down because i have to work i'm making sacrifices to my family i'm not going to certain events like they're very close.

27:53They all live in Connecticut. I don't do that much. I have sacrifices for my own personal life, like different decisions, not to go on dates. So just cancel things because I just want to work. And like, I'm constantly traveling between cities. I have a selfish reason of like having my apartment in LA because between all this chaos, I like to go back to there and like have a weekend. And then I like to go run around and like do all my interviews. But I know that's a choice. Like I know for a fact, there are some people that do have access to this technology and they don't care. Like they just they just use it for the day to day and then they, you know, have their leisurely activities.

28:25But unfortunately, I'm competitive and I want to succeed. So I'm like, how can I maximize my opportunities right now in this window? Yeah. You at least I will say how old are you? You have vastly more self-awareness than I had. And so I the same in some ways still do have the same mentality that you have right now. but I think where you're probably way advanced than me, and that probably gender is part of that too, is not only do I think what you thought, but I thought the people who didn't make the choice I was making, there was something wrong with them. Like they were leading a lesser life if they chose to live a more subdued, you know, work eight hours a day.

29:06It's just part of your life and spend a lot more time doing leisure activities. And then I've come to realize that like, you're you for reasons good and bad. Adam Schertz, some of it is, you know, genetic and some of it's trauma or whatever else it has shaped you. Just like the same thing for me. And therefore, that's how we need to act. But ultimately, if someone else can have fulfillment and contentment with half of the effort, because that's better for them, that's fine. But it took me much later in life to have the wisdom to understand that. Whereas everything you just said was basically almost an acknowledgement of like, hey, this is what I choose.

29:45It's right for me, but there's no judgment on someone who chooses something else. So you should feel pretty good because it definitely took me like several decades to get to where you are. Sometimes I feel good. Sometimes I need to go to the spa and get a massage. Sure. This will be a shift into investing because I think this does package itself well into how you chose to lead Tusk Ventures and how you're now going into services for equity. So can you talk about that shift? Yeah, sure. Sure. So I, you know, unlike most people you talk to, like I didn't start off in business or technology. Right.

30:21I worked in politics and government for years and years and years. You know, I made government salaries or campaign salaries for years and years. And then I kind of fell into tech totally by accident. Right. So my last like real job was in 2009. I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager and ran for mayor of New York City. we won. And I decided that I thought there was sort of in the kind of political consulting business, a hole in the model where typically people did one of two things. Either they ran comprehensive campaigns for companies or institutions or candidates, whoever it was, but in one place, or they would work nationally, but they would offer one skill set.

31:04They were a pollster. They made ads, whatever it was. And my view was that the world had changed enough that the way to get things done in government and politics was no longer like a guy knows a guy and you know the right guy. It's really multifaceted, right? So yes, it's the inside game of lobbying, but it is also earned media and paid media and social media and grassroots and all these other tools. And I felt like the amalgamation experiences I had had, both in terms of the things I've done and the different places that I've lived and worked, said to me, I think someone could do everything everywhere.

31:38And that was sort of the genesis of my first company, Test Strategies, which I don't run it anymore, but still exists as a consulting firm. And so about a year into that, I'm sitting in a Walmart meeting and a friend of mine called and said, hey, there's a guy with a small transportation startup. He's having some regulatory problems. Would you mind talking to him? I become Uber's first political advisor that day. I get really lucky when Travis calls back and says, listen, I can't afford your fee. Would you take equity? And thank God I said yes. And that became very lucrative for a lot of other stuff that I do today.

32:13But the experience that I had was effectively running campaigns all over the US to legalize ride sharing. And what we figured out that was really both transformative for Uber, but really informed a lot of the investing I've done ever since is in certain cases, you can turn your customers into political advocates and you can use the very technology that they, you engage them on for business politically. So for Uber, the taxi industry was a very, very big, it's hard for like someone your age now to sort of imagine this, but like was this incredibly powerful industry. Right. And we were a tiny, tiny, you know, seed series, He's a startup, right?

32:57And Travis, you know, is a genius and has transformed society, but he didn't have this great track record. He had a couple of failed startups before that. It wasn't like someone had like, it wasn't Elon Musk doing his next company, right? And, but the experience of Taxi was so bad for so many people and Travis figured out a way to do it that was so fundamentally better that he had this belief and he was right that But ultimately, people would fight to keep that opportunity. And as taxi would then use their lobbyists and their political muscle to try to put us out of business, which they tried to do in every single market in America.

33:37We saved ourselves by going to our customers and saying, look, if you like this Uber thing, we need you to let people know. And we built functionality directly into the app that let people tell their city councilman, their state senator, whoever the relevant person was, leave this thing alone. I like it. And so many people did that ultimately became more powerful than the donations and lobbies the taxi had. And we won. And so as that's all emerging, I'm like, okay, this equity thing, I remember literally the first time, I took the equity mainly just because I liked Travis and thought it was interesting and I kind of wanted to work on it.

34:12That was it. I literally didn't even know what the phrase equity meant from that, from a business context when I said yes. And then I remember one day, it was nighttime. time we were on the phone about some ish regulatory issue somewhere and he says like how many shares do you have like i didn't even know and then like he helped me figure out how many i had and he said oh we just closed around uh your shares worth 12 million dollars i was fucking i well you know sometimes you remember like literally exactly where you were and what you like i remember where i was in my apartment what i was looking at because i was floored because i'm a first generation american i didn't grow up with that much money i worked in government for years i mean after law school, I turned down all these jobs at law firms offering 150 grand or whatever it was at the time to make$28 ,000 at the Parks Department of New York City.

34:59Right. So like, to me, money wasn't like a thing. And it's not that I didn't want it. It just didn't, I didn't really understand like how much money you needed. It never had literally occurred to me that I would ever have $12 million. Like it just had never once crossed my mind. I remember me so fucking blown away by that I was like, oh my God. So this equity for services thing is pretty good. So I did it again with Clear to get them to airports and it worked out really well, not anywhere near Uber well, but it was really good. And then I made, I wouldn't call it a mistake because we made a lot of money and it was a good learning experience, but I made the sort of view of like, oh, well, the really rich people have funds.

35:40So I should have a fund. And so I went out and raised my first venture fund, Started in 2015. We started making our first investments in late 2016. FanDuel was our first investment. My thesis was, look, there's no fund out there that is regulatory first. So many startups have regulatory issues, and Uber in some ways was the perfect example of that. I had gotten credit for being the person that did it. That I can find more of these, and I can invest in them, and they'll want me to invest because they're going to want my help from a political standpoint. and we'll make a lot of money. And so we did.

36:18So we did three funds. Fund one was so hard to do, but we raised it finally. It was$35 million, but it's sitting at like about a 5X right now. We'll see where we're in circles. We'll see where circle exits in a few weeks when the lockup's done, but really well. And fund two was 70 million. Fund three was 140.

36:42And the funds I'll have to start closing the first round, circling the sub docs for fund four. It kind of hit me that like, it was the wrong business model because what I realized was founders who took our investment did so, not because they needed my money, but because they wanted our help politically. And ultimately I started talking to them like, let's say I just asked you what I did with Travis. Just, hey, just give me equity. I don't, but I'm not gonna give you a check. Like, yeah, we don't care. Fine, like we didn't need your money. Like any really great startup to get into typically doesn't need your money in the first place, right?

37:16Anyone who desperately needs your money, there might be a reason why. I mean, occasionally there's a diamond in the rough that no one believed in. But generally speaking, that's not the case. And I was like, why am I, A, giving 80 % of my profits back to my LPs, right? I don't actually need them. B, I have a great partner named Jordan Noff who's a brilliant, brilliant investor. but he's a traditional venture capitalist and we split the equity and the carry and everything else, which was reasonable. But I didn't really need all that stuff. I didn't need to worry about portfolio construction. I didn't need to worry about fund administration.

37:50I didn't need to worry about compliance. I didn't need to deal with taking board seats. And so I pulled the plug. I said, we're not going to raise fund four, and I'm going to do a hybrid of the first two models. So I announced this back in February, I think, of 25. And it's equity for services. So what I did with Uber and with Clear, but now also pro rata. And then as our investor rights come up, I'll either invest off my own balance sheet. So there are companies since that I've said, you know what? I love this company. And it's an amount of money that I can afford to deploy out of my own capital.

38:25And I'll do so. Or I have all these investors that made a lot of money with us. and I'll just go to them and say, hey, here's a company that I really like. The round is bigger than I can take myself. Do you want a partner and do SPVs? And for me, from a financial kind of time standpoint, it's better because one, I own 100 % of the risk, but I also want 100 % of the upside. Now I do every year now because I have a team of people who work at the company to both source deals and then more importantly, help all of our portfolio companies solve their regulatory problems. I have to pay those people every two weeks, whether it's a liquidity event or not, right?

39:02So it costs me a couple million dollars a year on the front end. But I then also own all. I mean, I gave the employees about 20, 25 % of it, but I own all of the rest. And that's a lot greater ultimately than the carry that I had at my fund in terms of upside leverage. And A, B, I don't have to deal with fundraising anymore. It's a pain in the ass, right? It's a huge pain in the ass. And the reality is I'm not good at it. And a lot of the things that have allowed me to succeed professionally are the same things that were hindrances for me for fundraising in that like, I'm a misfit, right? Like I don't fit in well.

39:44I wasn't popular when I was a kid. I, you know, like I'm not comfortable like in big social settings. Like I like my friends and I like to work, but like, I don't go to like, you probably have to go to all these like networking things. Like I don't go to fucking any of that. Right. I mean, even like conferences, I show up, someone meets me, they put me in the green room. I have a cup of coffee. They mic me. I go speak. I take a few pictures with people and then I'm out at the side door. Right. Like I don't want to socialize. Like even like the other day I was in San Francisco and did an event for tech week.

40:19I was very happy to do the event. The 30 people that came out to me afterwards and I had to like hear every one of their pitches and everything. I was like, oh my God, like there are people who feed off of that. That's not me. Right. So as a result, I was not a good institutional fundraiser because I don't play golf and I don't like hang out in a country club or any of that kind of stuff. And like, yeah, I go to lots of Mets and Knicks games, but I don't take clients. I take my friends or my kids. And so, and also what it turns out that institutional investors want to hear. They think they want a different, they say they want, they think they want a differentiated strategy.

40:57They don't. What they want is, this is exactly what you already know and are comfortable with, with this tiny twist that could deliver some alpha, but at the same time isn't too risky, right? And like, it took me years to even understand that. And then even when I knew how to say the right things, like it wasn't genuine, right? And so I think people can feel that. So I don't have to fundraise anymore. I don't have to manage LP relationships anymore. I hate sitting on boards because I don't add any value. I am only good at one thing, solving your regulatory problems, right? Or creating regulatory opportunity, arbitrage.

41:33And I'm going to do that anyway because I'm an investor in the company. Me sitting on the board and hearing about the CAC or hearing about the burn or the next race, like I don't fucking care. And I don't add any value to that conversation, right? So, but when we were investors, we're taking lead positions. We took board seats, right? So I had to sit on boards. Like I don't have a couple that I'm left on, but other than that, I don't do that anymore. Portfolio construction, all that shit. Like I don't have any of that anymore. And I own all the economic upsides. You put all that together. So for me, this is a much better model.

42:07And I would say for the people listening to this, look, most people in order to gain access to highly disruptive, highly promising startups have to write a check to get equity because that's how the model works. But if you have a particular skill set, so there are lawyers that can do this, there are marketing people that could do this, you could do this with media, right? Where you're like, hey, I have this thing you really need. I believe in you and I'm going to bet on you, right? I'm not asking you for cash. I'm just betting on the upside that you're going to succeed. Give me equity. You can make that sale.

42:39And if you can make that sale, it is a much better model. Does that answer your question? That does. Okay. Did I just change your worldview and what your career is going to go? No, I mean, I've been getting some advisory shares from people. They offer it to me, which is amazing. Were you ever thinking of raising a fund? Similar to you, like I know what it takes to raise a fund. I've worked at a couple emerging managers, emerging partners and funds. I don't like that. That is like adding another job on top of the job and it clouds your judgment and it makes you orient the practice and everything that you probably find is like your superpowers and what you enjoy out of investing.

43:16And it like, you have to like come in with the mindset of knowing that it is like a multi-dimensional practice and that like, that is just one component of it, but it is a very large component. And you always have to be fundraising. You always have to be like networking with LPs when you're on the road meeting founders, because it's like a cycle that just continues. So like in the beginning, like there are so many people that have reached out to me about starting a fund or like having me as like a co-GP, like something like that. And I just like, I'm focused on this. Like I need the power law for this to win.

43:48And then maybe other stuff will come across. But like it is, it would be a huge distraction. And even then, if you get to that point, I would still say having now done both the advisory share model. Now, ideally you get to a place like where I'm in, where I can then either have the capital or raise the capital to sort of continue on. It's just much better. I don't even really think it's a... Now, here's where that's not true. I'm, for the same reason, not a great fundraiser. My biggest fund was 140 and fund four would have been roughly the same size. If you can raise billions and billions and billions of dollars and effectively your business model is your management fees and not the carry.

44:31And a lot of people raise mega funds. Their superpower isn't investing. It's raising institutional capital, right? If that's your superpower, then yes, then that's the right approach. Because if you have$10 billion under management, you're getting$150 to$250 million a year in management fees, and your only business doesn't cost nearly that much to run, so you're pocketing the rest. Like, sure, that's great for as long as you can keep raising the money. But if you're not in that position, it seems to me that if you have the opportunity to do equity for services, it is just unquestionably a far better approach.

45:08Yeah. It's interesting. Carta had just put out their recent VC fund performance report. And so you're seeing this in the data of the VC market itself. There is a huge bifurcation in this barbell effect that Marc Andreessen talks about too. There's always going to be the small emerging class of managers. It's healthy. It's doing well. There's this huge gap in the middle of medium medium sized managers. And then like the large, the large funds just keep compounding because they've got the superpower law dynamics within them. Totally. Right. Yeah. And that's right. So I think the question is, if you're an emerging manager, and let's say you don't have the thing that you or I could do where you could just get the equity elsewise, if you can run your fund, it's a sub 50.

45:55My advice is to do that. Right. Because the challenge is like when we went to one from 35 to 140. The upside was we had more management fees. It made life easier. It was a little less of a scramble, right? But at the same time, we still ended up basically spending all the management fees on the operations of the fund. It wasn't like we were taking home lots of cash at the end of the day, but now the hurdle is 140. So for fund one, we won the money so fast because the hurdle was 35 and some of that was like SPVs. So the actual hurdle was like 22 or something. And we got there quickly and we were in carry and then we were in super, you know, we got like a trigger to get 25%, like all of that really quickly.

46:38Whereas with fund three, the investors are based on just me looking at the fund. If the investors are going to make money, like it's going to work out for them, but I don't know how much carry I'm going to make. And I also didn't make that much of the management fees. And so 140 is like the worst possible size, right? If you can do sub 50, get a couple of great hits and really ride those great. If you could do billions of dollars and make a ton of money in management fees, great. But that in-between number, like at least for me, it didn't make sense. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. It's interesting.

47:10Cause I don't think like many people think about VC and it's like a very sexy, it's attractive industry, but they don't understand the actual dynamics of structuring it out that you're actually probably not going to take in that much money. And most managers are poor for a very long time. Yeah. And even like, it's funny, there's this sort of view of like, well, if you're early stage, as long as you have a couple of home runs, you're in great shape. So that's true if it's a$35 million fund. But my second fund is$70 million. It's sitting at a three and a half X right now, but has no DPI, a couple of minor secondary things, but no real DPI yet.

47:49Again, the investors are going to do really well. I don't know that we're going to do that well on it, right? Because you got to return the 70 and the management fees and then we'll make money. But the truth is you probably need, like we have one absolute grand slam in that fund, right? That we led the series A, like a 30, which is a mental health startup that does kind of the back office. And I think we led the A at 32 and a half and, you know, valuation now it's at least 50X, right?

48:20But everything else is like, there's a couple of probably five to 10Xs and then a bunch of oneXs or zeros. It will work out well for the LPs. When I kind of look at over a 10 year period between the management fees from that and the carry, how much I'm going to make, like, again, not a great use of my time. Like I still own my consulting firm. I don't work there anymore, but I still own it. And like, I look at the profits that that generates and that takes me a couple of hours a week of management and maybe some pitching. And then in comparison to that, like a lot of the venture math isn't there at all.

48:55Yeah, the math isn't mathing. Yes, exactly. So there's that component of the macro of the venture capital world right now. And then there's also the AI component, which we talked about a little bit before. But before we started recording, We were talking about valuations and how that's impacting whether you're an AI company or a non-AI company. There's also data in Carta that series A companies get a 30 % premium on them compared to if they're AI versus non-AI. And I think it's probably more than that because if you reduce it down to good companies, the delta is going to be much, much greater.

49:37Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, we see this all the time, which is there is a mass. So when I started investing capital, so that's 2016, we were in this sort of a golden era venture where all that mattered was growth, right? No one's like, oh, we'll figure out the business model later. We'll worry about profitability later. And that worked for a while. Like we had some, you know, FanDuel and Coinbase, some great successes out of that. Some of them became really profitable companies. Some did not. But fundamentally, it was ultimately bad economics. It was a rational exuberance where everything was just sort of based on this incredible enthusiasm about the future.

50:19And by the way, at least with AI, there's like this concept of some sort of breakthrough that we can't totally understand. Back then, there wasn't even really that, right? A lot of the tech was like a marketplace. It's not that complicated, right? Like you, me, and Lance could build a marketplace this afternoon if we really wanted to, right? So, and then the bottom fell out. in like 21, right? And then everyone's like, oh, right. This is a business. We need to worry about unit economics. We need to worry about EBITDA. We need to worry about CAC and like all these things. Like, okay, fine. Makes sense.

50:52Now we're in a world where we're living in both realities at the same time. So when it's a non-AI company, the post kind of drop-off mentality still typically applies. You really are looking at like the fundamentals of the business itself and ultimately will PB greater than L and will PB so much greater than L that this is going to become a really valuable company. When it comes to AI, we're back to this like, oh, would the law just kind of work out? When I was telling you about a company, I won't name the company or the firm that won the deal, but it was a deep fake prevention space. They had about a million dollars in ARR and I offered three and a half on 35, which I actually thought was kind of generous.

51:33right? The winning bid was 14 on 140. I have no idea how that investor is going to make back their money on that deal. If you were an employee now coming in at the A or beyond at 140, I'm not really sure how much, like if someone came to me to try to work at this company, if your only goal is to maximize the upside of the equity, like probably not, right? Um, and yet because it was just AI, somehow all normal rules went out the window. Right. And so for us, you know, like the other day I saw a company in the mental health chat bot space that is heavily regulated, definitely could use our help, um, has an insanely high valuation.

52:21Maybe it'll grow into it. Maybe it'll be worth it. Maybe it won't. I don't know. But ultimately realized that from an equity for service standpoint, like didn't make sense for me because there's no point in me taking a bet on a company that could, there's a million reasons why I could still fail, but hope that it'll be a five or a 10 or a 20X if the starting point is so incredibly high that I just don't see any world if you just look at the market where this could possibly be the case. It's kind of like I didn't do any cannabis deals. And the reason I didn't do any cannabis deals was not more alongside, it was just that when I looked at the valuation of the deals that I was seeing, and I looked at the comps on the Canadian market, which does allow cannabis trading, it was like, I don't really understand why these American private companies are so highly valued because when there eventually is a liquidity, if you look at the market that in Canada is a capitalist country, right, that has trading, like the multiples aren't nearly what you would need to succeed.

53:16And so like, other than some equity for services with ease. Like we never did any deployment of capital into cannabis simply because it just didn't make sense to me from an economic standpoint. And by the way, one or two maybe have disproved that, but not many, right? Like I don't really regret that decision at all. I'm not saying AI is cannabis. AI obviously has a hell of a lot more potential than cannabis, but I kind of still am applying that mentality to it. So a lot of the deals that I'm doing are in AI, but they're all really companies where the Series A is still sub$100 million, right? Or right at$100 million, which is still kind of high, but nonetheless, not totally insane.

54:02And if there are companies where it's well north of that, I'm just like, you know what? It might be, maybe I'll regret this. Maybe it'll be a great company. if you really want a regulatory help, I have a consulting firm that would gladly take your money, you know, but I'm not taking that quick. There's something about regulation that I find really curious. And I think it's become more apparent this year, particularly with the new administration and all their efforts and advancing different sectors. Like we talked about nuclear, like we talked about AI, like there are so many different areas where you're getting the connection between Silicon Valley and DC that it seems pretty amicable and it seems like it's actually progressing growth?

54:45Huh, so that's a really good question. I don't agree with you. You don't? No. Okay. I would say that there is a narrative that supports what you're talking about and reporters really like that narrative. Okay. And there are half a dozen people, Marc Andreessen, David Sachs, Chamath, others who are big Trump supporters, Peter Thiel, Elon in a way. And they've done really well, right? They've invested in a person who has a zero-sum mentality to the world. And in that person's worldview, if you are helpful to them, you can really do well along the way. Look at all the people who are investing in TikTok at a$14 billion valuation, right?

55:29If you're Larry or Allison or whoever it is, amazing, right? But But I would say that's sort of individual companies getting contracts or government favors, but it's not the market, right? So if you were China and you had the ability to install an American and control an American president, there's like an old movie called The Venture Incandidate that's about that. I think it's Russia. And you said, I really want to hurt America long term. Here's what I would do. I would go after what makes our economy great. So what is that? It is intellectual property. It is research and development. It is higher education.

56:12It is immigration because we can get the best and the brightest from all over the world to want to come here and then become part of our economy. It is free trade. It is independent Fed, an independent, you know, somewhere independent BLS. It is sort of, you know, an independent market, right? So there are all these fundamentals. Trump has undermined every single one of those things. So I would argue everything that makes the American economy great, that venture capital totally relies upon at the end of the day, is being undermined significantly. And so if you said to me, are you as bullish about VC in 10 years, if the trends don't reverse, now hopefully we'll have a new president, whoever it is in 2028, because hopefully we won't have sort of martial law or whatever.

57:01Um, and maybe that person from either party will reverse some of the policies, but at this current rate, I would say the American economy is far weaker long-term, um, than it's ever been. And I would be far less bullish on it. So, um, yeah, if you are, and by the way, because of what I do for a living, like, do I know how to get a startup into DOD or HHS or whatever it is, the FDA? Like, yeah, you know, there's a skill set that we have that, you know, we figure out the right ways into things. So it's not that we don't even take advantage of it. We do. But from a long-term American standpoint, I actually think that we're going to, VCs and sector for those who participated in this, unless they just made so much money and only just care about how much money they have and nothing else, are going to really regret it.

57:58So I'm curious on your perspective on this part in particular. So the US has over$37 trillion in debt. And so a lot of people are counting on AI and the technological innovation that is going on that's in these narratives to unlock that and offset it. How? By creating economic prosperity. Sure. Look, by the way, again, the title capitalist is literally in my job, right? adventure capitalist. I believe strongly in capitalism. I would say everything that I just, all those points I just made to you are what capitalism is, right? And what we're doing now, especially with the U.S. government just taking 10 % of Intel or whatever, that's socialism.

58:40I'm not a socialist. Like, yes, what you just said is right, but that's based on fundamental capitalist principles and theory of which we are not advancing right now. So like if you take the big, beautiful bill, for example, we took on a couple of trillion dollars more in debt. And I'm not really sure what the upside is, right? It might benefit me as someone at the very top of the tax curve, but what am I going to do with it, right? Fundamentally, people at the bottom of the ladder spend a lot more money. If you actually want to juice the economy, you want to give tax cuts or benefits to the lowest income people because they're going to spend every penny of it, right?

59:25You know, if I put it in treasuries or whatever it is, like that doesn't really do any long-term good, right? Other than just a lot more borrowing. So like in many ways to me, the unlocked AI is UBI, universal basic income. It's like Andrew Yang, I think was absolutely right about this. In fact, the reason why I ran him for mayor in 2021 in New York, we lost, but the one of the main reasons that I was, put my support behind it is because I truly believe that he's right about this, which is you can't have a world with 32 trillionaires and 18 % unemployment. That literally is not, that's the French revolution coming our way.

1:00:06And by the way, deservedly so. So if you want to have an economy where people can prosper, people have to have income. And if it turns out that AI does in the short term displace lots and lots of jobs. So I do believe that in a 25-year span, we'll be able to look at and say, oh, AI unlocked all these new industries that we can't conceive of today and all of these jobs, just like the internet did, just like the automobile did, just like the steam engine did and everything else. But there's going to be this 20, 25 year period, probably with massive amounts of uncertainty and job loss while other entrepreneurs are figuring out some of this stuff.

1:00:49Right. But as we know, like every startup that I invest in at sea, like I have no expectation of ever seeing liquidity for a decade. Right. The seven year, I don't know where the seven year thing came from. It's all arbitrary. Right. I mean, I've had a couple of lemonade was really fast. I've had a couple that were fast, but by and large, which a decade is the norm. So if someone in seven years creates something really exceptional, like the US economic output isn't going to really probably be impacted for 17 years, right? So what happens in that 17-year interim? People are going to really struggle.

1:01:24And if people are really struggling because they don't have enough money, if they don't have enough money, they're not spending money, right? I can't invest in companies that are going to make a lot of money if no one's buying the product. At the end of the day, every single thing I invest in is predicated on the notion of selling someone a product or a service for more money than it costs us to produce said product or service. Otherwise, it's not a business. It's a hobby like my bookstore. Fundamentally, people have to have money to spend. If businesses are so wildly efficient that their spend is radically less because they don't need it, and if consumers have so much less money because unemployment is 18 % or wherever it is, and people are really struggling, they're not deploying capital.

1:02:06That's called a depression, right? And so to me, fundamentally, if you took AI and then combined it with how do we keep money in people's pockets, you could have this tremendous boom. I would argue that the bill that we just passed is literally the opposite of that. That's interesting. It's also interesting bringing up the Intel investment. So that one happened. And then also MP Materials, which by the way, like manufacturers a lot of their magnets through China. So I don't really understand that one. Well, I think it's because you're still assuming some level of policy and consistency. And I would argue it's just about individual gain in every case.

1:02:47So if working with China helps a particular company that now all of a sudden benefits certain people, makes them more money, they'll work with China. Even the U.S. government? Yeah. I mean, not generally, no. In this U.S. government, what should happen with the TikTok deal? Is that not a deal with China? Fair. Fair. So then I guess, what is your opinion on all these U.S. government deals? I'm not a socialist. I don't support it. I believe in free enterprise, which means free markets, intellectual property, rule of law, investment research development investment in higher education as much immigration as possible that is how you unlock growth and we're not doing that this is just crony capitalism designed to benefit a handful of people at the expense of everyone else and we are going to pay a massive price for that scary yeah really fucking by the way i am in the process of getting portuguese citizenship right now.

1:03:46Less because I don't see myself living here, but as a Jew, we have never had a period in the world where we have lived in one country for hundreds of years safely. And I hope the U.S. is the exception to that, but I don't know that it is. And there's a lot to argue that antisemitism, especially on the left, is rising so significantly that I'm not sure that's really true. And I would like my kids to have another option, right? And it might be that the Portuguese passports should sit in a drawer and say for two decades and we never touch them. Great. That's actually a really good outcome. But ultimately, what I want to happen is Kristallnacht, which was the night, kind of the beginning of the Holocaust effectively, where all of a sudden it was like open season on Jews.

1:04:32That's not the time that you start figuring it out. Right. You figure it out now. Now, I am lucky enough that Portugal is still a country where effectively you can purchase citizenship. And that's what I'm doing. Right. because I have the ability to do that, luckily. But I would argue that if you can do that, you should because if you just take everything that I just said, if you disagree with everything I've said for the last hour or whatever it is, then sure, no need. But if you take the fundamental things I've talked about in terms of a zero-sum mentality, the underlying long-term damage to the U.S.

1:05:07economy and capitalist system, and then arguably not even investing in the things that allow, if you take the beginning of our conversation, humanity and the race to outpace saving over destroying. All of that does not argue for the long-term future of this country. And I'd like to have another option. Okay. Wow, this is a really depressing podcast. No, we'll amp it up. All right. Let's not... Some music, Lance. What can you do to make this better? Play some rave music. I don't know. Okay, so maybe a positive question. What is the biggest lesson you learned from working with Travis Kalanick? A lot.

1:05:52And I understand that he took a beating in terms of his reputation at the end of Uber. I am an unapologetic Travis enthusiast. Did he make mistakes? Absolutely. But they were generally mistakes of omission where he was so focused on growth and investment and things like that, that he really didn't pay enough attention to the underlying management of the company itself. And he paid a massive price for that. But I think he's one of the smartest. The two smartest people that I've ever worked with closely are Mike Bloomberg and Travis Kellanick, bar none. I remember one time, this was before we were going to have a New York office.

1:06:34So he was hanging out of my office and I was, we were in a conference room together, but I was on another call while he was working or whatever. So he only heard while he was doing his own work, 50 % of the conversation. And it was some potential campaign around like gas importation. It was really complicated, right? I barely knew what I was talking about. He only heard half of it. And when the call was over, just hearing my half, then explain to me everything that I got right and wrong and where this thing needs to go and how their business should work. And he was fucking right. Like the dude is a genius, number one.

1:07:11Two, he is relentless. And I think in some ways, his relentlessness actually has become a little bit of a mistake in the sense that other people say, oh, I need a Travis Callender-like founder with his relentlessness. His relentlessness is unquestionably a superpower. It works for him. There are other times where I've met founders who are almost trying to imitate him, and they're hyper-aggressive without the underlying substance being there behind it. And it's actually, that's really bad. That's actually worse than not being hyper-aggressive. But when you combine his substance, his work ethic, and his relentlessness, it's an exceptional combination.

1:07:56He saw the future, man, like the very first time I met him in person, I remember he said to me, one day, no one will own a car, they'll all drive themselves, and you'll get it by pressing a button. And he said that long before anyone else did, or at least long before anyone was like a futurist that just writes things, but doesn't actually do anything. And did more to make that happen than probably anyone in the world, maybe him and Elon, you know? And so he saw it so much well before. And even politically, you know, and I, my first book, I called this Travis's Law, which was the notion of, we talked about, if you have a product that people are really passionate about and you have the right means to mobilize them, you can turn your customers into political advocates and be big, powerful entrenched interests, right?

1:08:43Like I might've deployed that really well. And I might have taken that thought to other startups I've invested in. But that was his insight, not mine. And that's, to me, one of the biggest political innovations we've seen in decades. So he is one of the most unique people that I know. I'm biased. I am in Cloud Kitchen, so I'm not objective. And I also just think that there is a humanity to Travis because he's a shy, even awkward guy. he's not someone that's social he has his friends whatever but he's not out there on like the social scene all that much and so people don't really know so all they know are the stereotypes of him and what media does in general is they build you up and they tear you down and then as i've been arguing to him hey we're due for the build-up again although he's like i'm good you know i have a lot of disagreements about that.

1:09:38But so he got built up. Was he ever as absolutely heroic and superhuman as all those profiles in 2013, 2014, where you walk into an airport and there'd be like, you know, a hundred magazines displayed outward and his face is on the cover of every one of them. No, he's a human being. Was he in any way what he was made out to be when he left Uber? not even in the slightest, right? He's a human being. But I think with that said, he is one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever met. That was a really good answer. By the way, I'm sure a lot of people who are not Travis fans will hear this and be angry about it.

1:10:16I don't care. I've known the guy now for almost 15 years. I've worked with him for 15 years. I stand by every word of it. Wow. Well, that answers my Brex question. No, that's great. I usually ask a Brex question on like founder performance. And I think that really answers it all. But the problem is, and I have this problem too, he is not a good comp for anyone or anything else. I had the same thing in government, right? Where like, if you only ever worked in government politics for Mike Bloomberg, you're actually useless to everybody else. Because he was so different and so incredible. And so unlike the norm that it almost ruins you for like any other normal performance or situation.

1:11:02And Travis in a lot of ways was like that too. So when I try, I really try to not let my experience with Travis influence too much my thinking about other founders and companies because it's a terrible cop. Like for better and for worse, whatever it is, like you're not gonna have another one of him or like, I've met a lot of investments since Uber and some of them have been really successful, none of them are Uber. And I'm never going to make as much money as I did on Uber and anything again. You know, like that's just one of one. Yeah, total one of one. That's insane. Okay, well, Bradley, we are over time.

1:11:43All right, well, thank you for giving me all this time. I could talk to you forever, honestly. Yeah, we should keep going after the podcast. Let's get a live stream going. Yeah, we'll just keep recording forever. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen.

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