This Week in Startups

0:38 Jason explains the LAUNCH Accelerator 5:39 BasicBlock CEO Taylor Monks details his journey through the LAUNCH Accelerator 14:58 BasicBlock CEO Taylor Monks' biggest takeaways from the Accelerator 27:35 DaoCloud CEO Max Coleman describes his journey into the LAUNCH Accelerator 37:34 How did Max grow throughout the Accelerator? 48:36 Lately CEO Kate Bradley-Chernis describes her experience at the l LAUNCH Accelerator 55:08 What were Kate's biggest takeaways from the Accelerator?

This podcast features Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg discussing the slow US reaction to COVID-19, Trump's involvement, press coverage, global stimulus packages, and the impact on markets. They also talk about the viral coefficient, second-order effects, and advising portfolio companies during the pandemic.

0:01 Jason intros today's topics 2:15 George calls in and asks Jason about social media interference in the 2020 election 11:13 Joey calls in and asks Jason for some tips on starting and growing a podcast 21:05 Dan asks Jason about which health-tech startup idea to pursue 26:49 Alex calls in and asks Jason about the types companies that will thrive in an economic downturn 34:35 Karen asks Jason about legendary founder & investor traits 44:11 Blaze calls in and asks Jason about when to join a startup to maximize equity & job security 52:14 Patrick asks Jason how to get on his radar in terms of getting an internship/job at LAUNCH 55:33 James asks how a young early-stage firm can differentiate itself from the pack and attract talented founders

0:53 Jason intros Nicole Quinn 1:59 Nicole & Jason describe their separate Calm investments, will it be the first mental health IPO? 8:00 Calm's I.C.E. celebrity engagement method & how it got them LeBron James 8:54 Investing in Sophia Amoruso & Girlboss: what is it about "Force of Nature" product people that attracts Nicole to invest? 16:03 Investing in Gwyneth Paltrow & Goop: what is Goop's business? What are the most profitable parts of their business? 19:42 Investing in Rothy's, and the inverse correlation between the success of e-commerce companies and how much they've raised 24:34 The magic moment of having shares transfer from private to public when a company IPOs 26:53 Changing her risk-averse mindset going from Wall Street to Venture Capital 33:28 Nicole's current investment interests, why voice assistants are crucial for retention 38:16 Investing in Lady Gaga & HAUS Labs: driving business via new product "drops", understanding how engaged a celebrity is in their business, celebrities as an acquisition channel 45:03 Dealing with Goop product blowback, the Netflix series & understanding the science behind it 50:12 Investing in Cameo & CEO Steven Galanis: celebrity selfie videos as a platform 54:44 What types of Founders does Nicole invest in? 56:54 How is Nicole's portfolio split up by stage?

0:40 Jason intros Jeff Housenbold 2:16 What did Jeff do before joining the Vision Fund? How did he help scale eBay & Shutterfly? 4:15 How did he wind up at SoftBank? What was it like being recruited by Masayoshi Son? How did Masa pitch the Vision Fund to Jeff? 13:28 What was the timeframe for deploying the $100B Vision Fund? 18:10 How does SoftBank size their bets and how do they counsel founders to handle massive amounts of capital? 20:07 Coaching founders on using capital to create talent moats & build brand partnerships 22:17 Scaling their diligence alongside their capital deployment, understanding core customers & focusing on positive unit economics 28:30 How did the Uber & Didi deals go down? How close was SoftBank to investing in Lyft instead of Uber? 33:23 How SoftBank looks at investing in adjacent companies and mergers 38:42 Jeff's background & the importance of education in changing your lot in life 46:07 Changing focus from Growth to Profits, the effect of short-term thinking and its impact on Dara and Uber since their 2019 IPO 57:23 Thoughts on VTOL? Will we see VTOL vehicles or self-driving first? 1:02:16 Jeff's take on Coronavirus and its impact on the markets & how founders and CEOs can combat market volatility 1:09:38 Portfolio Review: Zume Pizza 1:11:32 Portfolio Review: Katerra 1:14:03 Jason guesses the toughest 4 industries to penetrate 1:15:03 Portfolio Review: Plenty 1:19:29 Portfolio Review: Memphis Meats 1:23:05 What happened with the WeWork investment? What % does SoftBank now own, and can they turn it around? What are some lessons learned from the entire saga? 1:27:13 Jeff shares some "Jeff-ism's of Business" 1:27:52 How is the Vision Fund II raise coming along? 1:28:36 How the scale of the Vision Fund impacts people's ability to understand their investments 1:32:05 For founders: When is the right time to engage with SoftBank?

0:54 Jason intros Max Lobovsky 3:21 What is Max's business with Formlabs? What are people printing? Is it hitting scale with consumers yet? 10:52 Where does the majority of their business come from? 15:40 Is coronavirus impacting the supply-side of Formlabs? 20:16 Understanding the most lucrative use cases for 3D printing 21:58 What skill do you need to be a 3D modeler? 31:04 How did Max raise his first round of capital at Formlabs? 36:02 What was his experience at MIT's Media Lab? 39:54 Why did Formlabs raise a $15M Series D at a $1bn valuation? Benefits of building Formlabs organically 50:00 How Formlabs helped a makeup artist win an Oscar & how many customers in Hollywood do they have? Other use cases for 3D printing? 58:08 What is the "Holy Grail" vertical for 3D printing? 1:00:15 Best examples of 3D printing in sci-fi media

0:51 Jason intros Bain Capital's Ajay Agarwal 3:17 Are we experiencing late-stage capitalism? Is capitalism broken? 8:22 Why is upward mobility stalling? 15:29 What is it about founders & startups that made him dedicate his life's work to? 18:46 What piece of knowledge got him in startups? Ajay describes gross margin & incremental costs 23:03 Two insights on why enterprise software is the best business 30:11 Mitt Romney at Bain Capital & issues with cultural appropriation 36:44 Ajay's early days at Trilogy Software, how software sales were different in the 1990s 42:23 Companies going from sales-driven culture to product-driven 46:52 Ajay describes one of his best investments: FourKites 49:13 Ajay describes the biggest miss of his anti-portfolio: Pinterest, and why some firms care about stage and some are stage-agnostic 54:57 Has Bain ever participated in every round of a companies life-cycle? 58:15 Effects of the SoftBank Vision Fund on venture capital as a whole

0:54 Want to see what it's like to be an Angel Investor in Jason's Syndicate? DM @thesyndicate415 to read Jason's last 3 deal memos 1:37 Jason intros Austen Allred & gets his side of the recent Lambda School controversy 6:22 Jason intros Katherine Boyle & gets her take on how she would have advised Austen on PR 7:58 Explaining Lambda School in simple terms 13:10 Setting up Lambda School as a counter to predatory loans 14:31 Jason explains late-stage journalism, Austen describes his board's response 16:20 Techlash, issues with journalism today, how Balaji-coronavirus story sparked response 24:52 Fixing journalism 28:00 New Twitter investors Elliot Management want Jack out as CEO, is Twitter broken? 30:00 Misconceptions of Lambda School rolling up ISAs, how privatizing education in SV causes techlash 40:33 Katherine explains her investments in the defense space 46:00 DoorDash files for IPO, did they miss their window? 47:30 Analyzing coronavirus, wet markets, the "Wuhan shake" 58:51 Robinhood outage as Dow jumps 1000 points 1:01:03 What does Katherine invest in? 1:04:41 Jason introduces his new soundboard

0:42 Jason intros Jack Kramer & Nick Martell of Robinhood Snacks 1:06 Starting Market Snacks as a side hustle after rooming together in college 13:24 What Series of Robinhood were they acquired at? 14:11 Jason's origin story meeting Vlad & investing in Robinhood 18:38 Coronavirus impact on the public market... worrisome or no big deal? 30:16 Iger steps down as Disney CEO, will this hurt them long-term? 35:40 Star Wars movie rankings 37:00 Is $DIS a buy or sell? What about the next CEO? 42:11 Bloomberg or Bernie? 46:56 Tech-lash: Link-baiting Tesla crash 53:02 Growth vs. Profitability in the Private & Public markets 54:34 How are Uber, Lyft, etc. combatting this? 1:01:55 How will Airbnb handle the shift? 1:04:10 VTOL vs. self-driving 1:07:58 What are "Cult Stocks"? How are they defined? 1:11:09 Millennials & Gen-Z are voting with their wallets 1:23:46 What are Jack & Nick's favorite stocks right now?

0:50 Jason intros Benchmark's Sarah Tavel 1:20 Aside from Slack, what other companies grew like consumer-facing but charge like enterprise? 3:19 How was Sarah recruited to Benchmark? How is Benchmark different from other major VC firms? 12:04 Limited upside of talking to the press in 2020 17:30 Growing up in NYC and going to Harvard 21:30 Jason on becoming a "Don't touch the thermostat" dad 23:58 How did the offer from Peter Fenton go down? What drew Sarah to Benchmark? 28:36 Sarah's thoughts on disrupting VC as a woman from the inside & from the outside 37:30 How going from operating to investing is trading stress for anxiety 40:51 Jason and Sarah discuss their most personal & significant investments: Calm & Pinterest 47:26 How Pinterest's business model was a mold of Facebook and Google 49:45 Jason tells regulators how to stop Google 58:14 Investing in Chainalysis & Crypto infrastructure 1:12:44 Are the best companies polarizing? 1:16:30 Investing in Hipcamp 1:29:43 Marc Andreessen asks Sarah a question