E72: Impact of sanctions, deglobalization, food shortage risks, macroeconomic outlook and more

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
I now have a chief of staff, he's pretty great, he's worked for me for a while, and he's doing a great job. But it's actually really helped, I will say that. And then I started a family office.

**David Sacks** (0:08)
Wow, congrats.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:09)
What does that mean? You have a place in your home that you call an office?

**Jason Calacanis** (0:15)
You don't like to break down your refrigerator, there's an office? That's a family office. Yeah, the family goes in there to talk about office stuff.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:21)
Where does Jade put the stickies that say we're out of granola bars? In the family office.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:43)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the All-In Podcast, episode 72, part deux, with us today, again, the Prince of Panic Attacks, the Sultan of Science, David Friedberg. The Prince of Panic Attacks.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:00)
The Zephyr of Zoloft.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:03)
And also, as you're hearing, cackling the Duke of Degeneracy, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya. And of course, everybody's favorite, the Rain Man himself, the Drunk History channel uncle, David Sacks. I mean, David, I follow you on Twitter.
You're tweeting 50 times a day.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:23)
Oh, I was thinking the same thing. When do you work?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:26)
What has happened to you? You won't meet with startups anymore. I bring you startups. You say, you know what? I'm no longer going to meet with startups.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:32)
You're like stuck in your room, tweeting.

**David Sacks** (1:34)
I don't do first meetings.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:36)
That is the end of your career.

**David Sacks** (1:41)
Huge mistake. No, it preserves my energy. There's nothing more draining than endlessly spending your day in first meetings.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:46)
Why don't you just have a short first meeting, like a 15 minute first meeting?

**David Sacks** (1:50)
Well, that's what we have a team for.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:51)
I love it.

**David Sacks** (1:54)
They don't because we know exactly what we're looking for. SaaS investing is very metrics driven. And so the first meeting, so it's like the first meeting, we just find out do they meet our basic threshold for growth?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:05)
I love it for growth.

**David Sacks** (2:06)
Yeah, exactly. So we run the numbers and I will meet with them if they look good.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:12)
I love this. I would like all VCs to take the same approach.
And I will let everybody know. My DMs are open. Jason at calacanis.com. I will take the first meeting.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:22)
Sacks, I need to call you after this.
One of our businesses, which is not in SaaS, has started to sell SaaS software. And we've already booked $40 million of fucking ACV by complete accident from zero.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:35)
You stepped in it?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (2:36)
And I need some advice.

**David Sacks** (2:38)
Yeah, let's talk.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:39)
All right, everybody. It's been a bit of a crazy couple of weeks here. And we have to start with the war in Ukraine and do a bit of an update. It's been over 20 days. The death toll continues to climb. We don't know exact numbers here. It's very hard to get information. We're not experts. We don't have boots on the ground.
But according to the New York Times, 7,000 Russian troops have been killed.
And Zelensky said on March 12, 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed. I think we've got three or four angles we need to talk about here. One, I want to talk about food supply with Friedberg since you ran climate.com and have a lot of expertise in that. And of course, Ukraine and Russia are the breadbasket of the world.
Chamath, I want to talk about markets, of course. But let's go to our history channel, Uncle First, Sacks. You have been going down the rabbit hole, looking at the history of this. Let me just ask you just a point in question.
Is Russia losing the war?
And if they are losing the war, if that is a possibility, is that even a possibility that they're losing the war? Are they losing the war? And then what is the exit ramp here? And what does it mean on a go-forward basis? Right.

**David Sacks** (3:54)
I think great question. And so here's where I think we stand three weeks since the war is that Putin clearly miscalculated. He thought this would be a cakewalk. Obviously, it has turned out not to be. The Ukrainians have put up very fierce resistance. The Russians have taken very serious casualties and losses.
And so the war is very much, you know, up in the air. The outcome is very much in doubt.