Podcast notes – Palmer Lucky (Anduril) – talk at All-In Summit

Starting Anduril, raising VC was hard despite having sold Oculus for $1B+ – lots of hesitation / resistance against national security, building tools used for violence

Ukraine war has shattered view that we live at end of history

Defense procurement today is slow, broken

US has strongest commercial AI, followed closely by China
But the defense contractors (the Defense primes) are far behind in implementing AI / autonomy – more AI in John Deere than Department of Defense

Putin: “Ruler of world will be one that masters AI”

Defense primes don’t have access to best talent or tech
Yet the best talent, tech cos, are prohibited from working with them

After Oculus, Palmer wanted to use his money, reputation to do something unpopular

1951-59 – built 5 generations of fighter jets, 2 generations of carriers
Now we’re lucky to do one of them in a decade

After Cold War, US government wasn’t a great customer for military investment

Lots of these companies opposed to working with military – but it’s a smoke screen to preserve access to China markets and capital, it’s for self interest

Once armed conflict breaks out, we’ll realize how dependent we are on our adversary (ie China)

Wars happen if one or both sides mis-estimates probability of winning – if both agree on probabilities, they’ll negotiate / compromise

Blamed Jason Calacanis and others like him about losing his job at Oculus – “destroyed me…still filled with rage about it…”
Upset about JCal’s personal attacks, especially about his family
Palmer donated $9K to a PAC which created an anti-Hillary billboard – start of massive controversy
Why was he fired from Facebook? “Clear that a lot of people in media and tech…kept attacking me…Trump winning was what made it un-tenable”

Pmarca – feels safer to be in the mob, you’re part of the group, and you also get to attack

Andrew Bosworth leads Oculus @ Facebook now – it’s about being on right side of politics (he was extremely anti-Trump)

Lots of people at FB won’t reveal their politics if they’re right of Bernie Sanders for fear of losing job / reputations

Palmer is Republican, his Anduril CEO is Democrat

Chamath – invested in seafaring drones – had DoD contract opportunity, but faction inside team was opposed to it, resulted in a 3 year detour to make a weather app, but now back to working with government contractors which was right move

“Broadly technology industry needs to support military” – but people can choose where to work

Anduril is ~1000 employees now

VR is final computing platform – “it’s not the next one…it’s the final one”
Why is VR not massive yet?
-need more popular content to build self-sustaining flywheel
-need to improve on device quality, weight, cost

Effective use of drones in Russia-Ukraine conflict – cost asymmetry between $200K drone that destroys a multi-million tank

Anduril has $1b contract to do counter-drone work; Russia doesn’t have that tech
Cost-plus contracting is standard – everyone incentivized to build most expensive systems, not just prime contractor but also all sub-contractors – because you also get a % of that!

Anduril uses own money, builds own products – talk deeply to government about its problems
Go to government with working product, instead of just a whitepaper

US can ship weapons to Ukraine because of allies like Poland

Jason: what would Taiwan conflict look like?
-could be a drawn out blockade – economically strangle them, prevent weapons from coming in
-Taiwan doesn’t have tools today – maybe a decade ago they did – but China military tech has been ascendant
David: How vulnerable are our carriers?
Extremely – designed to project power when you have uncontested air superiority
One carrier = 5K lives lost with one hit

“If you did that to Kara Swisher…she woulda pulled you off stage”
Kara calls Palmer a “douchey man-boy”

If you care about these issues – changing your Twitter PFP isn’t enough – or who are silent

China fighting strategic and economic war against us for a long time
Hollywood promoted delusion that we can solve any problem in the last second

Podcast notes – Irving Azoff, Daniel Ek, and Tom Freston on the music industry

Panel is from 2014 (!)
Listened because I wanted to hear from Tom Freston

Irving Azoff

Live music has never been stronger

Recorded music as % of artist revenues has dropped from 30-40% to 5% in last 10 years

Daniel Ek – founded Spotify at 23, college dropout, rejected from Google job

Thought Napster was most amazing invention ever
Discovered so much music, but didn’t work for the artist

“Make something more convenient than piracy” and people will pay for it

Took 3.5 years to get the first licenses – lost his hair through the process (a joke)

Spotify 10M subs (vs Netflix 350M)
Music always had some form of free – unlike most tv/film
Seeing a lot of interesting global behavior – eg, turned on Turkey, saw bump in German subs because of the 4-5M Turkish people living in Germany

Spotify is a platform, not in business of direct to artists
Long successful partnerships with labels

Whenever an artist tours, their tracks always make Top 100 in that city

In Sweden, streaming took off first, and most valuable aspect Spotify provided was transparency, which gave everyone more data to better negotiate deals, for artists to understand what’s happening

Paid ~$1B that year (2014) for rights (to labels)

Listeners can follow artists – now artists have direct communication with fans

Streaming is biggest change since inception of recorded music

Tom Freston – led MTV for many years

Started MTV with no experience, no money, but a team that was passionate about music

Record industry notoriously resistant to change, resisted all new media formats including stereo

Once you get young artists, discover you can sell records, the record companies change their minds

Any enduring youth business always comes from outsiders – MTV, Vice

More music than ever, but doesn’t drive culture same way as 80s, 90s – tech culture seems to have replaced it

Used to think people would never watch sitcoms on phones – but that’s what the kids do now

Podcast notes – Bill Simmons (Grantland, Ringer) on Peter Kafka’s Recode Media

Guest: Bill Simmons
Host: Peter Kafka

Bill sold Ringer for $250M to Spotify just before pandemic
HBO helped a bit, but he was primary investor
Gimlet had sold for $200M a year earlier

When he launched Grantland in 2007, felt podcasting could be a big thing
ESPN didn’t recognize that, was a source of tension

For first few years, podcasting just felt like fun, was trying new things, taking chances
Podcasting as listening-on-demand
Started getting more fans on street saying “I love the podcast”
Random jogger with headphones pointed to him, “I’m listening to you”
Listening on commutes, at work, while exercising

Initially there wasn’t much competition – just Marc Maron – easier to get celebrities, was like a first date with guests
Now in 2022, all celebs have already been on podcasts, know what it is now
Guests are less interesting now – they’ve already been on many podcasts
Now it’s more about reactive content – about what’s going on in the world, analysis and commentary

Major change is speed at which people react and consume media

The Ringer – trying to figure out how it differs from Grantland – realized it was the speed of reaction, and coverage across multiple channels (blog, video, audio)

Rewatchables is their most successful podcast library – have done 250 movies now

Grantland was sports + pop culture, lots of people didn’t understand how they could combine

What do people care about? “We need to be there”

Netflix’s mistake – binge model doesn’t work for all shows – like Stranger Things (could have gotten 8 weeks of content and commentary, instead of 1 week)
Netflix has so few water cooler hits – would be great to stretch out the this for multiple weeks, give people time to digest each episode

2008, didn’t know repercussions for anything (for social media content) – now it’s just the price of having a platform

Third decade as a national media personality
Prefers when things are quiet, being ahead of curve, talking about stuff he’s really interested in

Spent a lot of time on Ringer film content
Didn’t like doing TV that much – like his former HBO show – podcasts have replaced that format
Players now have their own pods (eg, Draymond)

Last successful new Late Night show was James Corden
But think about how many successful new podcasts have launched in the same timeframe

Spotify built $Billion compound in LA
Adding more video content to audio now
Video very important to Spotify now

Son likes to watch YT clips of Bill’s podcast
Young people just staring at phone, have to win their attention in 2 seconds
Will next gen listen to podcasts? Kinda scary

Sabermetrics really hurt baseball – misses the narrative and story focus
eg, Jeter v Ichiro, do more eye tests, debate it all day, instead of just talking on stats

Football is fun because of the randomness – season to season, teams and individual players, high variance, easier to debate
Tougher with other sports

Went to Spotify in part because of the data on listening behaviors, content, can spot opportunities, eg, Derek Thompson (great writer) – wanted to work with him for awhile

Assessing talent for writing vs podcasting is different skillsets
Grantland had 9 out of 10 of the biggest podcasts at ESPN – value of cross-promo, a combined sensibility / package

Spotify helped with infrastructure, let them focus on what they’re good at, Spotify strong position to be audio leader
For first 2 years of joining Spotify, they were all remote and doing everything on Zoom
Similar vibe to when he joined ESPN, felt like they had momentum, were growing, market leadership, lots of potential (clarified that ESPN didn’t fire him, but didn’t renew his contract)

Runs global sports for Spotify, developing a comprehensive global strategy
Basketball, F1, Soccer – thinking about it globally, leveraging Spotify’s huge audience and tech and resources

Spotify video player will eventually have live content too
Can you watch Euro League championships on Spotify? Day 1 of Coachella?

Spotify’s only been in content seriously since 2018 – lots of progress in a short time

Still has a few years left on his Spotify deal

150 employees in his Ringer universe now
Returning to a normal office / working situation
Feels like Grantland in 2014 – cool checkpoint – getting inbound, momentum, opportunities

Dream podcast guest is David Letterman
Only other time he had nervous energy was Larry Bird (even more than Obama)

Pulitzer novelist Don DeLillo on his writing habits

I work in the morning at a manual typewriter. I do about four hours and then go running. This helps me shake off one world and enter another. Trees, birds, drizzle—it’s a nice kind of interlude. Then I work again, later afternoon, for two or three hours. Back into book time, which is transparent—you don’t know it’s passing. No snack food or coffee. No cigarettes—I stopped smoking a long time ago. The space is clear, the house is quiet.

A source. Sounds quite similar to Murakami’s:

When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

Podcast notes – Mohnish Pabrai (Investor, Charlie Munger disciple) with William Green

Guest: Mohnish Pabrai
Host: William Green (Investors Podcast Network)

Won charity auction lunch in 2008 w/ Warren Buffett
Warren introduced him to Charlie Munger

2009 lunch w/ Charlie at California Club
Studied Mohnish’s US portfolio – led him to sell his Sears position

Became bridge partners w/ him and Rick Guerin when one of their group dropped out

Charlie uses the f-word a lot – which surprised Mohnish

Charlie’s an assembly line, devouring books and readings – reads 500 books a year – skims a lot
Broad interests – global warming, American history

Charlie doesn’t look back, entirely focused on problem at hand

Charlie and Buffett don’t talk as much as they used to – partly due to how long they’ve been together

Charlie understood earlier than Buffett about buying a good company even if it’s not undervalued / cheap (as opposed to Buffett’s more Graham-like investment approach)

One difference was Costco – Charlie wanted to take a bigger stake, Warren thought it was too expensive

Another difference was BYD – it took Charlie a long time to convince Warren because of his confidence in the founder

Charlie introduced Mohnish to Li Lu, wanted Mohnish to have a good partner / someone equal to talk to
Had regular lunches in Arcadia and Pasadena

Li Lu recommended Amore Pacific (Korean cosmetics) but Mohnish couldn’t understand it, but it went up 80x
Korea as state of art for Asian beauty products

Li Lu then recommended Maotai – most valuable liquor company in world
$1000/bottle

Mohnish recommended Micron to Li Lu

Charlie thought Li Lu was incredible person, 3 Columbia degrees at same time (law, MBA, and undergrad) – English was his second language

Li Lu invested float of his student loans and made $1M by the time he graduated!

Charlie met Li Lu at an event commemorating Tiananmen Square
Had weekly breakfast for awhile

Charlie will understand a business in 10 seconds that Mohnish has been studying for weeks

One of Charlie’s filters is “win win win” – everything must be win across the board

Mohnish tried copying Berkshire’s strategy in India – buy an insurance company, use the float for investment

Insurance is a difficult business to be in, Warren mentioned it this year at Berkshire meeting
Geico is unusual in being well run, but encountering problems now too
Bizarre business – sell product but don’t know real cost until 5 years later – models are often wrong

Berkshire’s core textile mill business and insurance businesses turned out not great – but investment portfolio more than made up for it

John Templeton: Best analysts are wrong 1/3 times

“Greed takes over” – important to have checklists and hear opposing viewpoints and partners to talk to help damp this down, damp down the animal spirits

Investment isn’t brain surgery – you’re gonna have a high error rate
Have humility to realize when you’re wrong, must be candid about it, and move on

Howard Marks – talks like a robot – doesn’t seem to get emotional – yet he’s super creative and based on gut
Bill Miller says he cries a lot

Charlie had a very tough period in 1970s, failed partnership, wound it down – a lot of the money was rolled into Berkshire
Decided in 1974 he no longer wanted to manage money

Warren and Charlie – beautiful souls with hard exterior

Value of his YPO membership – 8-12 member groups (Forum) – everything is confidential

Charlie gave Mohnish advice on his struggling marriage / divorce – predicted everything that happened
Recommended a movie to him that was quite accurate

Charlie has 8 kids
He and Warren understand people so well, people dynamics

“Show up early” – big lesson from Charlie, very uncourteous to be late
Li Lu would show up 10 mins early for breakfast w/ Charlie, but he was already there, then 15 mins, then 30 mins – eventually Charlie told him he came early to read his paper!

Charlie emphasized value of being ethical as a competitive advantage
“Enlightened self interest”
“Most things in life function on trust”
If you become trustworthy, you have a massive leg up in life, your reputation
You get there by having a consistent life, demonstrate repeatedly that you play ethically, are long-term, treat everyone around you well

McDonald’s said they had 3 stools that they rely on – franchisees, vendors, and employees

Stopped 3/5 of way