E6: Big Tech antitrust aftermath, potential effects of an M&A clampdown on Silicon Valley & more

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
All right, everybody, welcome back. It's another episode of All-In Podcast, the podcast that is racing up the charts, despite the fact that we record it every three or four weeks.
There's no marketing, there's no ads in this podcast. It's just four friends who play poker together, who've decided to talk about the most important issues in the world.
Welcome back to the podcast, David Friedberg, the queen of quinoa himself, obviously climate.com, Eatsa, and an undisclosed beverage startup that I'm not supposed to talk about it. Sorry about that. I know a lot of people were tweeting about this beverage startup. You're still not ready to talk about the beverage startup.

**David Friedberg** (0:36)
Thank you, Jake Cal.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:38)
Welcome back to the show.

**David Friedberg** (0:39)
I always appreciate your promotions.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:42)
But when will the beverage start?

**David Friedberg** (0:44)
By the way, do you guys want to talk about Jason's home address?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:48)
Because I have that, I think.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:50)
I want to ask, is that a picture in the background? I love space, by the way, as you know, but is that a picture of Uranus or what is that picture?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:58)
I think that's Saturn. It's Saturn.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:01)
It's Saturn.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:02)
It's not Uranus. No, it's Saturn.
Friedberg, obviously taking the first Virgin Galactic flight, Chamath Palihapitiya, of course, with us here. The Prince of Spacks calling in from an undisclosed location that is not burning down like the United States. How are you doing on your vacay?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:23)
Doing really well. Thanks.
I'm giving you the three-button salute as I told you.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:27)
Yeah, thank God the microphone is perfectly positioned so we do not have to look at your chest hair.
All six of your chest hairs. Oh my God.

**David Sacks** (1:35)
It's like a thousand-dollar suit that's missing all of its buttons, or shirt, rather. I mean, they couldn't afford to put buttons all the way up on your, like, probably $2,000 shirt.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:45)
Austerity measures.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:46)
When I get back to the United States, as Jason said, my haberdasher will meet me at plain sight and have to slow the three buttons.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:52)
Yeah, when he leaves for Europe, they remove the three buttons, he comes back, the haberdasher puts him back on each shirt.
He does that for the entire wardrobe. And of course, chiming in is Rain Man himself, David Sacks, professional blogger, and the fund manager of Craft Ventures, of course, before that, working at PayPal with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and a bunch of other famous people, two of which have gone on to have demonstrably more success than Sacks, but Sacks having, of course, more than successful, demonstrable success than the other 72 rocket scientists from PayPal. In between, he did a little company called Yammer, which Microsoft bought for a billion dollars.
Speaking of big companies and big tech, we had a big tech hearing this week, and Jeff Bezos, Sundar, and Zuck himself, as well as Tim Cook, two founders and two hired guns, people who were hired for their positions, defending themselves from what I thought was some pretty good questioning. My expectations were very low that anybody on that panel would know what they were talking about. For me, I thought Jeff Bezos did the best job. He had a great opening statement and he was the most candid and I think least likely to get broken up. Going around the horn here, Chamath, who did the best job in the hearings? I don't know if you saw all of them or just clips, but who do you think shined?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:22)
I only saw, to be honest with you, your recap, which I thought was frankly really, really good. We should probably link to that in the show notes so people can listen to it. I saw a couple of answers.
The thing that jumped off the page to me was I read a little bit of Bezos' statement. I thought it was pretty fire. I thought he did the best job kind of positioning himself. But the reality is, you know, it's kind of what I said a few days earlier on CNBC. But I just thought going in, this whole thing was set up to be kind of performative theater. And it basically was that, you know, the just like the level of questions are just so poor. The level of understanding is so bad.
And then, you know, people just use it as a way to grandstand and everybody did so. You know, I wasn't completely blown away by any of it, to be quite honest.