All the crap you never needed

March 24 2023 Raw Notes Chamath and Friedberg both having sea salt and vinegar pistachios JCal getting paid for moderator gigs Fed hikes rates Raised by 25 bps Market went up Fed claimed 5.1% surprise print of May 2021 was transitory - started rate increase in March 2022 - so late to react by 9 months or so Now late to realize what stress the economy is under right now Tremendous stress on the banking system due to unrealized losses from hiked interest rates on long dated bonds and maybe soon to come unrealized losses on mortgage and housing issues Fed seems to have done the worst thing possible which is take the middle path Fed can raise and lower interest rates but they also have a balance sheet that can absorb assets Quantitative Easing Last June they started Quantitative tightening - restricting tools in the system Chamath thinks they should have raised interest rates 50bps and ended the problem We know from Volcker era that we need to raise interest rates high until...

March 17 2023 Recap   Chamath recently enjoyed a Laura Piana dinner, and now, it's time to recap the week in Silicon Valley. People have been reacting to Jason's all-caps tweeting, and a Wall Street Journal editorial blamed Bill Ackman and Sacks for spreading panic. Silvergate's failure has led some to point fingers at cryptocurrency, while others blamed VCs for the issues at SVB. Meanwhile, Signature Bank, First Republic, and Credit Suisse are all experiencing problems, with the Swiss government backing the latter. The current banking crisis is a result of poor decisions made during the Covid-19 pandemic. The lockdown economy, money printing, and lowering interest rates have all contributed to the massive costs that have to be borne at some point. The Federal Reserve's claim that inflation is transitory has proven false, and their subsequent rapid raising of interest rates may also be misguided. With global debt at 360% of global GDP, the question of who to blame for t...

March 10 2023 Sacks got a bulldog SVB This is like 2008 and Covid We are in the middle of it right now Really acute effects that many companies and founders are dealing with right now - 1000s of companies Worse than 2008 or Covid for Silicon Valley companies Like Lehmann for Silicon Valley Garry Tan comment - this is an extinction level event This is not a Big Tech event - small companies - 10 to 100 employees, 1000s of companies - Little Tech is being hit Regional banking crisis SVB was compliant according to regulators Now everyone is talking about why would you keep money in JP Morgan or top 4 bank So regional banks might suffer a bank run SVB supports 50% of venture backed startup Venture Funds also have money stuck in SVB Billions of dollars frozen Wed letter SVB CEO issued a letter to shareholders Prior to the run - it was a financial solvent business End of 2022 Deposits grew a lot over last 2 years But now recently dep...

March 3 2023 Chamath austerity measure jokes Friedberg took company public Bestie Guestie - 5th Beatle - Brad Gerstner! Secretary of Saas - Sacks DeSantis article in WSJ - anti woke Maher press tour kinda - liberalism vs wokism VC Fomo Frenzy in AI Insane fund raising in generative AI space ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion 500 generative AI startups Collectively raised $11B Doug Leone - next Platform like Mobile and Internet - AI is real, its the next platform, how do we not invest in everything that walks Credit Suisse is offering 6.5% for a 3 month TBill So if you’re going to invest for 10-15 years, you need to get 20-25% return vs safer money in TBills LPs to VCs: What am I paying 2.5% per year in managements fees for if you can’t invest well when instead I can get better returns in TBills If you rush in now, you won’t have enough time diversity and high correlation Be careful, in 2000 you knew internet was going to be big - but if you invested in Altavista, Yahoo, Excite...