Welcome back to the all in podcast.
The number one business technology and political podcast in the world.
I am your host, Jay Cal, Jason Calacanis.
And with us today, three of my besties.
You got David Freiburg cackling over there.
He is your Sultan of science previously known as the queen of Kinwa, he sold the Kinwa business made a killing in Kinwa.
Also with us back from Italy back from Italy, Jamal Palihapiti.
He's at 67 % button.
And he's not happy about it.
But the hair looks great.
You still got a little sea salt from the the yachting.
I think I'm going to try to keep my hair long.
Let's see what happens.
Did you bring any of the sea salt back with you from the Mediterranean, put it in a little bottle to spray or no?
No, but I do have some oil.
Oh, okay, great. And have you showered in the last week?
Or is it still you got the Mediterranean?
Every day should showered since I've gotten back.
See, that's the problem.
You don't have the sea to use as a natural, you know, disinfectant and deodorant.
Exfoliant, exfoliant also.
Yeah. Look how many buns he's got going.
I know. It's just tragic.
I feel uncomfortable for your neck.
I mean, it's like creeping all the way up.
Your neck looks like a prisoner.
I walked here, but I had it totally unbuttoned.
And I thought this is completely inappropriate for mental park in August.
So I buttoned two buttons back in business mode.
He's in business casual mode.
He went from casual to business.
Okay, and with us, of course, the Dark Knight himself.
Yeah, the Rain Man, David Sacks.
And we have a bestie guest for you folks.
Friend of my other pod this weekend startups, Reed Hoffman is here.
And you know him as a venture capitalist board member at Microsoft.
And you were the co founder or the founder of LinkedIn?
I don't know if you had a co founder, co founder of LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft.
He's got his own podcast masters of scale.
And he and David Sacks work together at PayPal.
Reed, give it welcome to the program and give us a little story.
What is your fondest memory?
Or the most quirky memory?
David Sacks. And that all those weirdos, I'm not supposed to use the word weird anywhere, I get banned on X.
All of those unique personalities at PayPal.
Tell us about that moment in time.
And do you remember the first time you met David Sacks?
Yeah, I met David, because Peter had known him from Stanford and hired him in.
And, you know, David, very quickly, because he you know, has a strong learning curve as he plays these things kind of got the instinct of what the game we were playing with PayPal was.
And it's part of the reason why I think, you know, each of the execs have had, you know, kind of key contributions to making you to kind of PayPal successful.
And David's was this kind of like, maniacal focused on the kind of the cycle of how the product worked on eBay.
And like, like there was just a whole bunch of stuff I learned from him.
It's part of how I track, you know, kind of, you know, people I respect, is what do I learn from them.
And that was one of the things that I would say I learned from David at PayPal.
That's nice. David, tell us your first memory of meeting Reid Hoffman.
Would you remember where you were?
Do you remember the conversation?
Yeah, I think when we met through Peter, you know, and Reid, I think Reid was on the board of this infinity back then and then joined full time.
What were you like, 28, 27, 29?
No, I mean, let's see, this would have been...
I guess it would have been 27 when I first joined PayPal 27, 28, I guess something like that.
Yeah, 99. So whatever that was.
In any event, I mean, I'll just return the compliment, you know, PayPal had all these existential issues, where you had these larger entities trying to kill us, Visa, MasterCard, eBay, who else?
Oh, the lust goes on Citibank.
Yeah. And Reid was was kind of our emissary who kept all these dogs at bay and managed to, I guess, be friends with them, I guess, to some degree, even though they wanted to kill us.
And Reid was kind of in charge of making sure that these existential issues didn't blow up on us.
And they didn't. So we got pretty lucky there.
It's the Will Rogers line.
It's politics is the art of saying nice doggy while you hunt for a stick.
Tell us like a moment read that is incredibly memorable to you from that PayPal era, you know, some existential moment or one of more difficult or funny moments, late night moments that would be indicative of that era and whatever was in the water that drew all that talent to one place.
Well, part of it is that, and this is, you know, among the things I was learning from from Peter, was that Peter and Max recruited just a tremendous focus on on, like intense learning curves.
So, you know, it was one of the things that Peter later is like, Okay, I guess you have to interview for being on sports teams and so forth, because this teamwork thing does matter.
But like high performers, and it was kind of like a, like, and that was part of the reason why there was such intense, you know, kind of innovation and capability.
You know, probably the most stunning memory I had at PayPal is we, you know, we're all young, we're all first time we're, we're kind of doing a startup that matters, you know, kind of making this stuff happen.
And we do this merger with x .com.
And, and, you know, like pre the merger closing, you know, Elon is is saying, Oh, I got this CEO, Bill Harris, he's the best ever.
That's part of the reason why you should give so much percentage to the company decks .com and the merger, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And then after the merger, literally the first meeting I had with Elon is Bill Harris, a complete disaster, we need to fire him right away.
Like, before we get to the first board meeting, we need him fired.
And I'm like, Elon, you need to talk to Peter about this.
Well, I mean, this is decisive.
That's for sure. Yes.
All right. Well, let's get into we want, you know, we're gonna go a little bit mullet here, Friedberg, we're gonna start with business.
And then maybe we'll have a we had a fun meeting about that topic at a place in Palo Alto that no longer exists called Antonio's Nut House.
Yes. Yes, the legendary Antonio's Nut House.
And when Bill eventually did meet his demise at PayPal, it was called the Nut House Coo.
He got whacked at the Nut House.
We're at school tables in the back.
We're in the books in the front.
Well, he wasn't whacked.
He was whacked at a board meeting, not at the Nut House, but the certain plans were formulated at the back of Antonio's Nut House.
It's Antonio's Nut House is yeah, the most unhygienic bar in the Bay Area.
And then that's, that's a pretty low benchmark, let's just leave it at that.
We will start with some business here, talk a little AI.
And then since two of our panelists have a passion, we'll do the party.
