Liberation Day, Tariffs, US v China Open Source, OpenAI Fundraise, $CRWV, TikTok | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner

**Bill Gurley** (0:00)
A riddle for you before we move on.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:02)
Yes.

**Bill Gurley** (0:02)
What do Salesforce, Netflix, Square, Amazon, Palo Alto Networks, Facebook, Snap, Proofpoint, NetSuite, and Coreweave have in common?

**Brad Gerstner** (0:12)
No idea.

**Bill Gurley** (0:13)
They all broke issue. Oh wow.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:28)
And we're back. Bill, great to see you.

**Bill Gurley** (0:30)
Good to be seen.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:32)
I mean, you have to be pretty stoked coming off those winds last weekend in San Francisco.

**Bill Gurley** (0:38)
Yeah, I'm repping the gator hat still. I'd say we kind of eek by, if you watch, for those that did watch.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:45)
That was an incredible, that was an incredible final few minutes. Explain it. Take us through the final few minutes.

**Bill Gurley** (0:51)
Well, I mean, to be honest, like, I was afraid. Like, I didn't think there was a chance at this point because they were behind by so much as you were heading into the end of the game. And they basically, you know, scored four three-pointers, you know, against zero from the other side. They intentionally fouled and had missed free throws. So I think someone said the Yahoo game predictor had it at like 98% Texas Tech with like very little time left on the clock, and they somehow eeked it out.
Now, the bullish people will say, oh, you lived through something like that. Now, you have confidence to deal with anything. But, you know, the odds makers have put Duke in front of Florida at this point, and that started in the opposite place. So anyway, one game at a time, super exciting. I was out in San Francisco at the Chase Center, got to hang out with the coach a bit, and some of the players' parents, and it was a good trip. And now, since I'm in Austin, it's right down the street here to San Antonio. So a lot of friends coming in, and we'll see what happens.

**Brad Gerstner** (2:01)
It's going to be a heck of a weekend. And maybe if a certain couple of teams end up in the championship game, I'll sneak in there on Monday night.

**Bill Gurley** (2:08)
I guess as long as we're repping and rolling, you know, I have two degrees, one from Florida and one from Texas. The Texas ladies are playing in the Final Four in Tampa. So a lot of good stuff happening.

**Brad Gerstner** (2:21)
Speaking of a lot of good stuff happening, I think there are some people in the world that think a lot of not so great stuff is happening based upon market reaction to the president's announcements of these tariffs. So why don't we kick it off talking about Liberation Day?

**Bill Gurley** (2:34)
Yeah. So we're recording this right after Trump's presentation. I think you and I both watched it, and then we jumped on the pod. You've been talking about this. Like it's obviously been choreographed that this was coming. And you know, you've been saying for a very long time that Trump and his team are very serious about this, rather than the argument that, oh, it's just a means to an end, you know, and a way to get a negotiation started. You have made the point that you believe, that they believe this is actually where we need to take the economy. And as such, you've been conservative and worried about where this would go. You gave a presentation last week on how to think about this. What did you talk about there? I think it was at the JPMorgan Tech Conference.

**Brad Gerstner** (3:22)
It was pretty clear to me and you, we were talking about it in early Feb. You know, this was doctrinal. This is, you know, there was a philosophical belief around trade that they wanted to, you know, create a more fair and level playing field. And the real debate, you know, has been going on is like, how big? And there are a couple of different camps. And so JPMorgan had this great event in Montana last week, 100 tech CEOs, but, you know, they had Howard Lutnick, Elon Sachs, Doug Bergram, all talking about, you know, various aspects of this. And they asked me to do a little bit of a presentation on decoding the Trump economic agenda. And really it boils down to this, Bill. You know, at the top, I think that all the CEOs in the room are pretty excited about the golden age that people have been talking about. You know, a pro growth administration, pro business, pro investment, lower taxes, less regulation, pro M&A. We've seen this M&A flywheel starting to kick up. This AI super cycle. But everybody's been pretty terrified about these tariffs. And the real question going into today, Liberation Day, was were tariffs going to land closer to the $600 billion trillion tariff level that Peter Navarro had been talking about and Howard Lutnick had been talking about, or maybe at a little bit lower end of the spectrum, which we heard a little bit more from Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett. And I think everybody was holding their breath. Well, we got the answer. We got the answer today. And so I was framing that at the JP Morgan Conference. I showed this slide. You'll get a kick out of...