00:18:57 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:18:57] S0: look to you for leadership. Yeah. And when there are moments of moral crisis and you don't offer anything, people are gonna be like, oh, thought you were a source of wisdom. I agree with that take 100%. How much do you tell founders to pick their VCs based on their morals? [00:19:14] S1: Not really at all, honestly. Think being... Look, I think it's a lot easier for me to say a lot of this stuff as a venture capitalist. Like, the job of a founder is just immensely more difficult, and I would love to be able to tell someone, like, you know, live your conscience in every way all the time, but like, I heard this once and and it really stuck with me, that like all money is green and all money is red, you know? Like it all spends, and it all probably came from something a little bit dirty. Right. And like ultimately at the end of the day, like, it's very difficult to like, whose money is it really? Frankly, it's like it's sitting in the startup's bank account, but it was put there by a venture capitalist who received it from some institution who received it from its donors. Some of
00:19:14 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:19:14] S1: Not really at all, honestly. Think being... Look, I think it's a lot easier for me to say a lot of this stuff as a venture capitalist. Like, the job of a founder is just immensely more difficult, and I would love to be able to tell someone, like, you know, live your conscience in every way all the time, but like, I heard this once and and it really stuck with me, that like all money is green and all money is red, you know? Like it all spends, and it all probably came from something a little bit dirty. Right. And like ultimately at the end of the day, like, it's very difficult to like, whose money is it really? Frankly, it's like it's sitting in the startup's bank account, but it was put there by a venture capitalist who received it from some institution who received it from its donors. Some of [00:20:04] S0: these investors end up having leverage over you. I guess that would... Yeah. I think, you know, if it's a minority investor and you're just trying to raise money, yeah. I mean, I tend to be on the sort of, when it comes to fundraising, pretty tolerant. I mean, I try to maintain and quote and especially on deal type stories, talk to right wing members of Silicon Valley. Like, is a funny role that I play where it's like, at once I have principals, but, you know, they're part of the community and I'm, you know, I want to be sort of a vehicle
00:20:35 · Yoni Rechtman, Eric Newcomer
[00:20:35] S1: to keep the community together and so there's I much piece of rather be able to believe, and I do believe that like the tides will turn than saying I'm gonna like cut myself off from anybody who disagrees with me. That's sort of incompatible with a lot of my other values, And, like, I have the privilege of being able to, like, speak about my opinions and, like, that is a, you know, not everyone has that. I do, but I still do, like, have a responsibility to, like, my partners and my founders and our investors to, do the job that they're paying us for. And, you know, I think if I were to just say, like, you know, fuck you to everyone I disagree with, that would be, a dereliction of my job. Where do you think things are going? I mean, Trump's gonna make some noises to moderate ahead of the midterms. He will do that unsuccessfully, but potentially like a credulous national news media will applaud him for, you know, firing Greg Bovino, and that'll be that. But I think a lot of what's happening right now is... Look, Trump was elected basically to do four or five things. America first, well, he's bailing out foreign governments and getting into, you know, illegal foreign wars, reduce inflation, he's making energy prices go up, home prices go up, not doing that, you know, close the border, send them all home, while he's just shooting Americans in the head and, like, rounding up children. Right. Hey, by the way, our deportation numbers are basically flat from Biden and Trump won. [00:22:17] S0: And Obama was doing more.
00:22:17 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:22:17] S0: And Obama was doing more. [00:22:18] S1: Yeah. Obama was doing more. Obama was doing more. Drain the swamp, he's like actively taking bribes and bringing third world corruption and cronyism America for the first time. Like He's literally partnering [00:22:32] S0: drug dealers and countries [00:22:34] S1: involved And then in the fifth one drug is released the Epstein files, which he is actively One of the main characters apparently. Yes, one of the main characters and actively subverting that investigation. So if those are the five promises of Trump too, he is failing on every single one of them in, like, really substantial and notable ways. I think he's gonna get absolutely, like, drubbed in the midterms. I think he is going to make... I think his party's really gonna pay for it in 2028. And my hope is that America can then begin the, like, long and hard process of rebuilding trust in government, rebuilding the institutions that have been, like, really, I mean, profoundly and severely damaged in even just the one first year [00:23:17] S0: of his presidency. You ended up supporting Mamdani. I did. Yeah, I voted for him over Cuomo. I ranked him like four probably in the I [00:23:26] S1: think I ranked him four or five in [00:23:27] S0: the primary. Like Brad Lander [00:23:28] S1: or Brad Lander, like like Zellnor, Yeah, [00:23:31] S0: Exactly, Zellnor was one or two, you know, I forget which exact, I think Brad Bees had seemed like he was gonna win. Or he had the more momentum, not that he was gonna win,
00:23:31 · Eric Newcomer, Yoni Rechtman
[00:23:31] S0: Exactly, Zellnor was one or two, you know, I forget which exact, I think Brad Bees had seemed like he was gonna win. Or he had the more momentum, not that he was gonna win, [00:23:41] S1: but he was Brad is also, I mean, you know, I've met him a number of times. I grew up in Brooklyn, you know, and have sort of known him, even if only peripherally, for a long time. I think he is a... We're not here to... And this is deeper into New York politics than your audience probably wants to get, but, like, I think Brad is, like, a really, really cool and, like, kind of beautiful soul. [00:24:04] S0: We talk about inside baseball stuff on [00:24:06] S1: this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And and if you wanna get really, really inside baseball, the, like, single most personally moving thing to me in Judaism is this idea of, like, Bezalem Elohim. We're all made in God's image. We share this kind of divine, like, divine spark or, you know, piece of divinity within ourselves. And, anyway, something randomly former New York City controller Brad Lander talks about a lot, and he and I have have talked about it and kind of bonded a little bit over that in passing various points. I think he's a really, really special person, and I'm excited to see what he does next. [00:24:40] S0: But do you think, you know, if Mamdani and AOC are the future of the Democratic Party? I think
00:24:45 · Yoni Rechtman
[00:24:45] S1: they're the future of the Democratic Party in New York, and I think it's really, really important to, like, be able to meaningfully distinguish between, like, the bluest of blue states and the rest of the country. Like, I don't... You know, John Fetterman is a Democrat. Like, Tim Kaine is a Democrat. You know, Joe Manchin was a Democrat. Like, there are a lot of different flavors of Democrat around the country. I'm not really super convinced that the, like, the way to win is to, like, put forth figures like Mamdani and AOC on a national stage. I think they do really well in certain corridors. I think they have some good ideas. I think they have some really bad ideas. I don't think that that is the future of the Democratic Party. I think that there are like, honestly, on some of the kind of bread and butter issues, I think that the left does a much, the left of the Democratic Party just does a much better job of like talking about things, and frankly like talk, like the whole... Affordability buzzword. Affordability and, like, that, you know, then just becomes this question of, like, do we do we see affordability through a supply side lens, which is more of the kind of, like, abundance and like YIMBY movement, or do we see affordability through more of the demand side lens, which is the historical democratic approach of like subsidized demand and then watch as prices spiral out of control? So the emerging Democratic consensus does actually, across the sort of range of Democrats, does seem to be more supply side or abundance oriented, which is really encouraging. I work in New York with a group called Abundance New York, who these guys these guys are great. Shout out, you know, Katherine and Ryder. And then nationally, I'm I'm close with the people who run the Inclusive Abundance Initiative. I think there's like the whole idea of abundance politics can work really well. I think the language itself is very like elite coded and and and maybe not super transferable. Works better as affordability. Let's do more things and make things cheaper. But that to me is like the sort of positive vision of the future that the Democratic Party should be putting forward. We just, in California,