E120: Banking crisis and the great VC reset

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, everybody, welcome to the All-In Podcast. And with me again this week, the Sultan of Science, the Prince of Panic Attacks, the Queen of Quinoa, David Friedberg, the dictator, Chamath Palihapitiya, wearing a beautiful Mr. B sweater, and David Sacks, the Rain Man himself.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:18)
Thanks for coming to my Loro Piana dinner on Tuesday, Jay Kal.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:21)
That was wonderful, thanks. At least one Bestie showed up for you. Wonderful, wonderful dinner.
I sat as far away from the Loro Piana people as possible in the arranged seating. Thank you for that. I guess maybe you were like, I'm going to contain the damage.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:35)
Bernard Arnaud said, put the all caps got at the end. And I said, okay.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:38)
Yeah, he still heard me. I was like, Chamath, what's the amuse-bouge?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:43)
Jay Kal's joke at dinner, every time he said something, he yelled like he was in all caps. He's like, I want another butterscotch pudding.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:55)
The butterscotch pudding is delightful, Sean.
Sean's like, I'm four feet away from you, Jay Kal. You take the caps lock.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:02)
Sean was so embarrassed. Chef Sean crushed it. Chef Sean crushed it.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:05)
Sean crushed it once again.

**David Sacks** (1:06)
Were you sounding alarms when the restaurant almost ran out of something? Alert, alert, alert.
Restaurant is running low on coffee.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:35)
All right, everybody. Welcome to the pod where we try to inform you. We try to make some jokes here. I just want to make what is a little bit of an opening statement here. There's not an apology and it's not a victory lap in any way.
But there's been a lot of attention, I think, on the last episode of the pod and perhaps some tweeting from two of the four besties this past weekend.
I saw and I'll let you speak for yourself here, Sacks, and we're going to get into the timeline of what's occurred and then what are potential outcomes here and solutions to the banking issues that we've witnessed in.
What is a week since the bank run on Silicon Valley Bank and the shutdown on Friday. But what I saw, and again, speaking only for myself here, was absolutely terrifying up close and personally watching people pulling money out of banks and watching people have to set up loans to hit their payroll. And this was like one of those surreal moments in a movie where like a meteor is coming towards Earth and you see it in the telescope and nobody else sees it or only a small number of people in the observatory see it. And I think part of the reason people listen to this podcast is because we are insiders and speaking again just for myself, I'm always trying to be exceptionally candid and transparent with the audience. Additionally, I make jokes.
So sometimes you might laugh during this podcast or you might laugh when you're reading my tweets. And that's part of what I do. Now I also realized that we have an audience now that is larger than I think any of us expected for this podcast. I certainly magnitude larger than I expected. And frankly, I didn't know if this podcast was going to make it past 50 or 100 episodes. And my Twitter following count doubled since we started this podcast.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:13)
And that's because you tried to ruin the plot.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:16)
I think it was because of the caps locks. But anyway, putting all that aside, what I would like to say as well is like, we are living in a situation that is unprecedented. I think the alarm bell I sounded, you know, was because I saw a fire.
We'll get into the timeline here. But I sounded that alarm bell after Silicon Valley Bank was put into receivership. And when I saw additional bank runs occurring, I wouldn't change it. I think these were the right thing to do was to inform folks. Now, I did use all caps, perhaps a little too much. That was a little bit of a bit. If people didn't understand that, maybe I need to adjust my communication style now that this thing is so popular. But I stand by my mode of operating in the world, which is I always want to be candid with people. I always want to tell the truth. And, yeah, sometimes I make jokes about life and, you know, dealing with these stressful situations. That's it. It's not an apology.
It's more of an explainer. And yeah, maybe I need to adjust the caps lock or how I deliver stuff. But I stand by the message of what I said. And I think it's important for us to maybe look at the series of events and misinformation that has spread because there are people literally blaming venture capitalists for the bank run that is now systematic and the balance sheets of multiple banks around the world.