205. Unicorn vs Pegasus, The Softbank Effect, & Impacts of a Recession on VC (Jason Calacanis)

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
Welcome to the podcast about investing in startups, where existing investors can learn how to get the best deal possible. And those that have never before invested in startups can learn the keys to success from the venture experts.
Your host is Nick Moran, and this is The Full Ratchet.

**Nick Moran** (0:23)
Welcome back to TFR. Today Jason Calacanis is back on the program. Jason is a serial entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and one of the best angel investors in the business. He's also founder and CEO of Launch, which invests in early stage startups with over 200 companies in their portfolio. In today's interview, we discuss an update on the firm and their investment focus since we spoke last in 2017 What's unique about his investment process? The Goldilocks Zone and also the Pegasus startup. The impact of SoftBank and Masayoshi Sun's Vision Fund on startups and investors.
What happens to venture in a recession? And we wrap up with Jason's thoughts on the WeWork fallout and if there's been a shift from a growth focus to profitability.
Here's the interview with Jason Calacanis. Peace.
Jason Calacanis is back on the program, joining us today from San Francisco. Jason is founder of Inside, the Launch Accelerator, the Launch Conference, host of This Week in Startups, and he leads one of the largest and most active syndicates in the world. He has invested in over 200 startups, seven of which have reached valuations over a billion dollars. And of course, Jason is the author of the popular book Angel, which we discussed last time on the program. Jason, welcome back.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:42)
Hey, thanks for having me.
Great job with the podcast, by the way. You're really cooking with oil over there.

**Nick Moran** (1:48)
Appreciate that. And you're at, what, a thousand episodes?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:51)
Yeah, we had the thousandth episode party here in Silicon Valley, just a small little affair with some of the guests who've been on. And yeah, it really is. Like when you do something twice a week, it doesn't seem like much, right? And then all of a sudden you look up and it's been 10 years of doing it twice a week. And last year, I think I did 130 episodes. And all of a sudden podcasting is a thing. You know, when I started, podcasting was not available on phones because phones didn't have the app store and there were no podcast players.
Podcasting was available on iPods, which was a device that came before the iPhone for people who are young listening to this. So I've gotten so old that I have to explain to people that the name podcast is because of the iPod. And I literally had somebody say, what's an iPod?
Imagine a wheel on a device and all your MP3s were on it. What about the internet? Nope, no internet connection.

**Nick Moran** (2:46)
It's amazing how the downloads change when something happens in technology to facilitate podcasts, like better apps and all of a sudden huge bump in downloads. Or when the AirPods came out, got this massive uptick in surge in downloads.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:01)
Technology unlocks things. We have an internal term at launch where when we talk about market size, I feel like that's a very unsophisticated way to invest. It's like, what's the market size? And you go find some TAM slide and you go to the YC demo day and they get up there and like, and we're operating in a TAM of $18 trillion. And you're like, wait, what's $18 trillion for food? I'm like, people eat $18 trillion worth of food a year and you're a delivery service, but does that mean you have access to that whole TAM? You know, it's like ridiculous, right? The best companies build bottom-up TAMs and they typically induce a market to exist.
It didn't exist before it.
And when you think about podcasting, the internet had all the ingredients for podcasting, but RSS was one of those great unlocks, right? Dave Weiner. Then you had this great unlock of the iPod that had storage and was in your pocket and headphones. And then another unlock with the app store, another unlock with Overcast with the Apple podcast player, which came out of a company called Swell that we invested in, which was the original podcast player that Apple bought.

**Nick Moran** (4:14)
CarPlay.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:15)
CarPlay, AirPods, 4G, you know, because it used to be you had to download your stuff before you left the house on your Wi-Fi or else you'd get a huge bill. So unlimited data plans also played into it. So it just, yeah, things cascaded, right?

**Nick Moran** (4:32)
It's amazing. It's amazing. Well, for today, we'll consider you the founder of modern podcasts for startups.