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by senkora 760 days ago
I sometimes listen to (parts of) the All-In podcast because I think it is useful to understand what powerful people in our industry think.

The four of them are really quite unlikable, and I can confidently say that if any of them happen to read this comment then they would not care in the slightest that I said that.

6 comments

Here's a solution: BG2 with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner is imho superior in quality and depth and bonus points as you don't have to listen to those 4 people.
I have the same thought process. What do they think about current high level trends, the economy, but otherwise I don't think very highly of them. The one bio science guy is decent, somewhat grounded compared to the others.

I did get kind of tried of their non-stop AI hype train talk. Seems like for majority of the last 1-2 years that's all they've talked about most of the time.

For whatever it's worth, the bio science stuff is the equivalent of the AI hype, just in biology.
I find it educational and entertaining. Even though I am not in the VC industry in the sense that I'm not raising money or currently VC-backed, I find their insights into financial markets to be very useful. That isn't to say that I think everything they say is true — it just means that it often provides insights into things that are happening or are about to happen.

This is partly because of who listens to the podcast, and what they do after hearing about things on the podcast. For example, they may help move markets a bit due to their insider (not in the sense of illegal) information regarding tech companies and trends.

Knowing that they have said XYZ can help explain why a certain stock popped or dropped, or was written about in a major media publication.

As for whether they would care what you said about them in an online forum...I would think that would apply to pretty much any podcaster — even ones with 1/1000th of their audience.

They'd probably say that likability is orthogonal to picking and mentoring successful startups.
But likability is correlated with convincing successful startups to accept their investments.
I think I was perhaps too subtle, I was critiquing a kind of anti-emotional intelligence you sometimes encounter among certain prominent tech figures.
It most certainly isn't. Maybe in a founder friendly thats a competitive advantage.
It’s just levels to how little you actually know. I don’t actually know too much more than what I knew when I only had 20k compared to more than that. They are rich, but they also don’t know too much more than their first million or so.

The only thing you’ll learn from this class of rich is how to stay rich. Most of us are stuck on step 1.

When Chamath explains the practical steps of his wealth it all sounds like psychopathy and luck. You can’t follow these game plans for shit, too much luck involved.

well in the case of Chamath it also comes down to scamming folks with SPACs
Actually, I think I like them more as people that I would like to hangout with every now and then. They have a silly sense of humor that I like (though JCal tries too hard).

I find their commentary to be so incredibly biased that it is 99% useless. They are all peddling their investments, positions etc. Chamath, for example, claimed that he did not know what Waymo was: either he is an idiot (since knowing this shit is his job), or this is all a show to promote their positions. I believe the latter.

It does help for picking up certain topics if you were out of the loop. However, I find that my HN+Twitter addiction makes me more aware of recent news than what they provide.

Other VC podcasts I find more informative, but also less entertaining: Village Global, Cognitive Revolution, World of DaaS