00:15:31 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:15:31] S1: Yeah. How do we avoid that? We'd move to Argentina? [00:15:34] S0: I mean, my that's strategy. I mean, you kind of fight as much as you can, but Peter is not wrong that that is a threat. Now, how you deal with that or what you do from there, I think is an individual question, right? Like, what's right for your family? What's right for you? But I don't think he's wrong that there's a chance that America is going in a pretty bad direction. [00:15:58] S1: Yeah, especially with the wealth tax just seeping in. [00:16:01] S0: The asset seizure? [00:16:02] S1: Potentially going national. That's definitely going national. People think [00:16:05] S0: that it's so funny. People look at this thing and think, Oh, it's a billionaire tax. It doesn't matter to me. Uh-uh. First of all, even in the California one, there's provisions for it to like, once all the billionaires leave, Oh, well, we need to get the money somehow. Okay, let's take the next lower down, the next lower down. This is going to impact the middle class way more than it's going to affect mobile billionaires. [00:16:25] S1: Yeah, we just had the CIO of A16z Perennial on, Mark and Ben's family office. [00:16:31] S0: He [00:16:34] S1: was talking about how trillions potentially, allegedly, have left California Literally. Trillions. And then now we have the SpaceX IPO coming up. Anthropic just filed their S-one today. So many people [00:16:48] S0: are leaving before these things happen. [00:16:49] S1: Do you think they're going to leave the country?
00:16:49 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:16:49] S1: Do you think they're going to leave the country? [00:16:52] S0: No. I do think it's harder to leave the country than I think it is to leave the state. It is. It's harder to leave the country than it is to leave the state. [00:17:03] S1: What's the preferred state? [00:17:04] S0: Oh, I don't know. For me, it's Hawaii. I'm not trying to avoid all, much to Peter's chagrin, and he makes fun of me for this all the time, I'm not trying to avoid high income tax rates. I am trying to avoid asset seizure though. [00:17:15] S1: That's funny. Trey did want me to ask you, why are you so obsessed with Hawaii? [00:17:19] S0: I love it there. Why? I can sit on lanai, laptop doing stuff overlooking the ocean for infinity. It's my peaceful, happy it's just so peaceful there to me. [00:17:34] S1: Do you get claustrophobic knowing that you're on an island? [00:17:37] S0: I don't. [00:17:38] S1: It's really far away. [00:17:39] S0: It's fine. It's closer than from here to New York. [00:17:47] S1: Is it? [00:17:48] S0: Absolutely. Really? Absolutely. It takes four hours and twenty minutes one way and five hours the other way [00:17:55] S1: LA, from here it's much further. [00:17:59] S0: It's a little further than San Francisco is the closest city in the world to Honolulu. [00:18:02] S1: I understand that now. I'm always like, why are people going to Hawaii? I don't understand it. Grew up on the East Coast the and it's like a two hour flight. Why do people go to Hawaii? Now we know. [00:18:15] S0: It's not far.
00:18:15 · Brian Singerman, Molly O'Shea
[00:18:15] S0: It's not far. [00:18:16] S1: It's not far. So, what about Hawaii? It's the seclusion. No, I don't [00:18:23] S0: think it's seclusion. It is the beach. It's the weather and the beach. I don't like wearing pants. I like wearing shorts. This is a common thing with Max too, next time you talk to Max Levchin about this. But I like being warm. I love the climate there. I love like yeah, I'm able to relax. [00:18:45] S1: Max did have a question for that, on that topic. Why do you wear shorts almost to the exclusion of all lower body garments, verbatim? [00:18:59] S0: Don't know, genes are pretty constrictive? What's the word? [00:19:03] S1: Restricting? Yeah. You don't feel free. Can't express express yourself. You [00:19:08] S0: yourself. Yeah, there you go. Bummer. Whatever the kids are saying these days, Wally. I don't know. But yeah, no, I do like being in warm places. Hawaii is, you know, kids like never having to wear shoes. The kids don't like wearing shoes for some reason. So they love Hawaii.
00:19:29 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
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00:21:02 · Brian Singerman, Molly O'Shea
[00:21:02] S0: Okay. [00:21:02] S1: Right? You've been exposed to all of them. You're friends with them. They're characters for maybe the outside world, and they're probably just your friends, so this is also kind of a weird question. We talked about Peter Thiel a bit. I want to know more, so his investing strategy, and the strategy that you formed at Founders Fund is heavy conviction, concentrated bets. I've listened to many of your interviews for preparation of this, and you're like, Reserves? We don't care about reserves. We're just going to raise another fund. How did you think about that, and what were the biggest allocations?
00:21:33 · Brian Singerman
[00:21:33] S0: Venture capital to me is put the most money in the best companies possible at the best price possible. Nowhere in that is like portfolio management and reserve calculations and ownership percentages and all that nonsense. It's like, just, Nope, it's pretty easy. Put the most money into the best companies possible at the best price possible. Sometimes the best price possible is more than what you want to pay. You know what? If it's a great company at the end of the day that you see is going be one of the greatest companies of all time, that's okay. So, it's the best price possible. That's venture capital right there. All the other stuff is just nonsense. The other thing is that we realized that we just knew from early on. First of all, it matched our style, having no fear on these things, but also just like, know, a venture fund like three Xs over the course of ten to twelve years, I don't even think that that beats the S and P. I'm pretty sure it loses to a Vanguard no load index fund. No, seriously. So just like, you've got all these people talking about like, woo hoo, our fund three Xed over these twelve years. Just like so it means your investors essentially lost money because they could have easily scaled money into an S and P no load index fund. We knew that. Beating the market is hard. Let's just be clear. Beating the market is extremely hard. You have to have some real advantage in order to do it. Venture capital, legal inside information. You're not playing the same level playing field as everybody else. It's not like the public markets where I want. No, that's why I don't invest in public market companies. I want no inside information about anything public. I want no liabilities on anything, but private companies do, you know, absolutely. And so, if you've got that kind of access and you can truly see something as a great company, the way to beat the market is to put a ton of money into that company. Like put every penny that you can. Like that's the way to beat the market in venture capital. Everything else just ties it or loses to it.