On this episode of Okay, Computer. Dan speaks with SRB Ventures Managing Partner Sahil Bloom about the major differences in East Coast finance culture versus Silicon Valley (2:36), venture capital firms going bargain hunting for tech stocks (6:40), how & where Sahil is deploying capital in the volatile market (15:10), accelerating layoffs at tech companies and startups (24:19), Andy Jassy’s succession challenges at Amazon (27:38), how the battle royal between Elon Musk & Twitter may end (30:39), if Elon Musk will still be the CEO of Tesla in two years (35:42), why Sahil loves Meta and Snap (39:42), and what’s behind Sahil’s rapidly growing influence on social and other content platforms (43:21).
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Dan Nathan: [00:00:36] “Current AD” Welcome to okay computer. I’m Dan Nathan. I am here with a good friend named Sahill Bloom. You may know Sahill from Twitter, but he also is the managing partner of SRB Ventures, a VC firm that he started earlier this year, focused on investments across fintech, web3, consumer tech and much, much more. Prior to that, Sahill was an early stage investor in more than 40 startups. You are a private equity investor. You’re also a prolific, I think, angel investor. That’s where those 40 tech startups come from. Welcome Sahill. Bloom to okay computer you have been on on the tape but this is your first voyage on oxy. [00:01:13][37.2]
Sahill Bloom: [00:01:14] My debut voyage. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Dan, I always, always appreciate the invite and always a pleasure to chat with you. [00:01:20][6.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:01:20] Let’s go back. Let’s rewind the clock. And I think it was the summer of 2020. Does that sound about right? I saw you on a video for CNBC like Make It or Acorns. It was something about personal finance. Right. And you were doing like an explainer. It was literally like. [00:01:37][16.7]
Sahill Bloom: [00:01:38] It was like on money printing. [00:01:39][0.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:01:39] IRL thread, though, which is really kind of funny, but it was made for TV, but it was really made for and I was like, I got to get to know this guy because I thought you were really good at it. And through like literally within 10 minutes of reading it, we were connected through DM, obviously on Twitter, and then we met in real life. [00:01:54][14.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:01:54] And you slid straight into my DM. [00:01:55][1.1]
Dan Nathan: [00:01:55] I really did. It was kind of awkward. And then Guy got all up in there, and before you knew it, you were on your way to the East Coast. You were starting you were really delivered at the time because I remember saying, hey, listen, you were so good on our podcast. You came on right after that and then you were like really starting to think about how to do content on multiple different platforms, everything. We’re going to get to that in the back part of this. But I really love to focus a little bit right now. You’ve been on Fast Money with me as a guest talking about public markets. Some of the stuff that you’ve been seeing in private markets and this last year or so really has felt like a slow moving train wreck if you think about tech markets, both private and public. And I think one of the interesting things and really what I’m curious to hear kind of your thoughts moving from the West Coast, right. A little more than a year ago, coming here to the East Coast, I think it’s like kind of Silicon Valley versus Wall Street, East Coast, West Coast sort of thing. I’m curious, like what you found as far as the differences in mentalities a little bit, because it was listed stocks that started selling off in 2021 before the broad market, the big averages, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ started selling off. They closed last year, rip roaring. You would have thought like things are a go to. But under the surface, there was tons of damage being done right in both public tech but also crypto. And that’s what’s really unfolded in 2020. So I’m curious, how have your thoughts changed about being from the West Coast and being in that kind of Silicon Valley mentality and now being on the East Coast? Any new thoughts or anything? [00:03:25][89.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:03:25] Yeah, I mean. It’s an interesting way of framing the question, honestly. I’ve never thought about it in that context, but it is a really interesting framing. And, you know, I tend to think of all of these things in terms of like a pendulum swinging, right? You have from one end of the spectrum of like this unbounded optimism of everything to the other end of the spectrum. And you’ve seen that in a very visceral way with crypto web3 over the last really over the last month or two, which went from everything’s up and it was like, you know, the whole movement around up only, etc., that everyone would [00:03:52][26.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:03:53] Numbers up. [00:03:53][0.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:03:53] Numbered numbers go up, you know, different Ponzi schemes, whatever it was, you know, to now just like boundless pessimism and everything’s a fraud and everything. Define this game and just what’s the next domino to fall? But I think when you think about the difference between West Coast culture and East Coast culture, one thing that I have definitely perceived is that the West Coast and I was in the Bay Area, so that’s also a microcosm of the West Coast. Admittedly, it’s an environment of techno optimism is the home of all of these things that got built. And so when you’re in that culture, you’re surrounded by really optimistic future thinkers. And it’s people who get paid for being optimistic about what the future looks like and make ambitious, bold swings and often are wrong about those in the long run, but still have that optimism sort of hardwired into the DNA of the culture. And I was there during a period of time that was a rip roaring bull market for that entire period. Right. I went to school out there in 2009, got down to school in ’13 ’14 with my masters. And from 14 through 2021, when I moved, everything was up and to the right. And so, you know, being optimistic was not only culturally wired, it was also financially wired because being optimistic paid off. If you were just investing in growth stocks during that period, you did really, really fucking well, excuse my language. And now, you know, come to the East Coast, I think I wouldn’t say it’s an environment of pessimism, but I would say East Coast finance culture is much more balanced. [00:05:15][81.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:05:16] You know why? Because it’s mark to market. Because there’s a report card every day when you’re thinking about public markets. And that’s really the way I think a lot of public market strategist, investors, analysts, however you think about it, I think that that’s the difference in the mentality, at least because I grew up in that market, I grew up here in New York, and I think that’s what’s different. And I think that if you want to have like as you just said. Unbounded optimism. You cannot be mark to market. You cannot be mark to market on a quarterly basis for the summer. And you need to think about things in that sort of time horizon. [00:05:45][29.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:05:45] A lot of VCs are having to think about that now. The whole mark to market thing, I completely agree with you. Right. Like I was in the private equity world. And what is mark to market in private investments? I don’t really know. Right. Like at the end of every year, you sort of get to decide what your valuations are and if you like them, you take them. And if you don’t, you think about what they should be and start tweaking assumptions, etc.. But a lot of these VC funds now that had these amazing markups and they were showing paper returns, not real returns of astronomical misses, are now looking at a lot of those late stage investments and saying, well, shit, the public comp for that just got cut by 70%. Do I mark that down now and make my return as I’m trying to raise my next fund look a lot worse? Or do I hold it where it was? [00:06:26][40.2]
Dan Nathan: [00:06:26] That’s a great Segway. So what do you read every day? I love the information, especially as I’m thinking about. [00:06:31][4.7]
Sahill Bloom: [00:06:31] I love the information too. [00:06:32][0.7]
Dan Nathan: [00:06:32] How I want to program. Okay. Computer, some of the topics that we talk about and I often bookmark a lot of stories and there was a bunch this week that I really kind of wanted to hit you about, and that was a really good segue way. So here was one from July 8th. It was Andreessen Horowitz, thrive, go, bargain hunting for beaten down tech stocks. Now, this is really interesting. The backdrop of this is that we know that Andreessen changed from a venture capital firm, and this was largely predicated on what they wanted to do with crypto and be able to buy tokens and hold on them. So they moved to an investment adviser. And we know that there’s been a bunch of other firms that have done that over the last few years. But this is the quote that I think was most important Thrive capital early this year bought beaten down shares in the online used car marketplace. Carvana. Okay, this was interesting. Andreasen bought shares in Jack Dorsey’s block, which partner Marc Andreessen has said that he regretted not backing when it was private and GVT bought more than 400,000 shares of Hashed Corp. Just, you know, Jeff Richards founded the Pod. He’s been on a bunch. He’s been talking about a lot of the unusual values in the public markets. So I thought that was really interesting. As says, the purchases come as many specie investors say they are holding off on private deals as they wait for private valuations to reflect a press valuations of comparable public stocks. Now, I think that is super interesting. Now, other thing that happened in that period of time that you’re talking about since you entered private equity is the advent of crossover. So funds that are investing in private but also in public. And so all of this being mashed together, I think is a really interesting. So you’re sitting on your hands as it relates to private valuations, and we know that maybe there’s a 6 to 9 months sort of lag here, but we see dozens and dozens of very innovative companies in the public markets that are down 60, 70, 80% or something like that. Talk to me a little bit about that mentality. Yeah. [00:08:15][103.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:08:16] So I think this is actually really logical and smart that these funds are doing it. If you have the ability to invest across both private and public markets in this environment, you’re effectively just saying what’s the opportunity cost of any capital that I deploy? And right. It used to be that those late stage private deals or just arbitrage because you were saying like, I’m going to get in at this price and I know that it’s going to go public in three months at two X, and so I’m going to do that all day. The IRR is incredible on doing that and for a while in 2021, 2020, it really was like that and the public market was taking those and accepting those deals and marking them up for these funds. That changed, obviously. And so now the calculus I think in their minds is why would I invest in a late stage private deal that is illiquid and tying up my money when I could invest in the same profile and get the literally the same growth profile. So if you’re thinking fintech, I’m going to make a late stage private fintech investment and it’s illiquid and I’m going and sitting on it. Who knows when I’m going to get out because the IPO market’s dead, or I can go buy Sofi or go by block or go buy one of these companies at a really attractive multiple, relatively attractive multiple. And it’s liquid and I can go and do that. And that is just from a trade off standpoint, it makes total. [00:09:27][70.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:09:27] Sense, except that you have to accept those marks on a quarterly basis where a lot of firms have not marked down like, look at that news this week klarna this is a buy now pay later the last public round. Those things. [00:09:38][11.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:09:39] Are Fugazi you. [00:09:39][0.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:09:40] Listen to on the tape with Danny Moses he’s been lately warning against a buy now pay later as our friend Jim Chanos for you know it’s. [00:09:47][7.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:09:47] Just another way of talking about debt. [00:09:48][1.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:09:49] Think about this. 46 billion valuation was the last private mark that Klarna took and they just raised it 7 billion because they need the cash. And if they don’t, they’re going out of business. [00:09:59][10.4]
Sahill Bloom: [00:09:59] I mean, today, Airlift just saw that on the walk over here. Actually, it’s a Pakistani quick commerce company, another one of these like 15 minute grocery type deals. And they had raised a ton of money. It was the biggest tech deal within the MENA ecosystem, Middle East, North Africa ecosystem. I think they raised 85 million in a Series B last year, burned through it, and they announced today they’re shutting down, which is just another crazy one. And honestly, that’s a crushing blow for the Pakistani tech ecosystem, which was really burgeoning. I mean, you’re going to see a lot of it. The reality is there is just a lot of business models that were getting floated by free money. [00:10:30][30.8]
Dan Nathan: [00:10:30] But, you know, what’s really interesting is that the warning signs were out there. We work Uber. These were all public down rounds. I mean, for all intents and Purpose is I mean, we work if you’re investing in growth rounds, you got absolutely destroyed. The same thing for Uber. So if I go back and look at some of the biggest IPOs in tech of the last five or six years, they’ve actually been disasters, you know, going back to SNAP in 2017. The list goes on and on. I mean, it’s actually been a pretty cruel market for a lot of these companies that have been unprofitable. They’ve been very volatile. There’s been periods where they’re up 50, 70, whatever, percent, but then they actually have crashed. And that was before the broad market, the stock market started to crash. [00:11:07][37.0]
Sahill Bloom: [00:11:08] Yeah I mean, risk has been repriced significantly, broadly speaking, right? I mean, you were in an environment in 2020, 2021 where the risk free rate was zero. And so you naturally as an investor, go further and further out on the risk curve in order to get return. And what happens if people make stupid decisions and you go and put money into things that probably don’t have strong merits from a business model perspective and I’m not old enough to have experienced many of these things, but I am a student of history and I just come back to the quote There’s nothing new under the sun. You just see the same sort of things over and over again. There’s clear patterns and it’s whatever the toy is, it’s a different version of it, but it’s the same thing. And whenever you get to the point where in 2021 you probably heard it, there were like articles that you’d start to read and people would say, Well, actually this time is a little different ecause technology has taken over and people aren’t understanding exponential growth. So we actually might just keep going up into the right and it’s not going to be the way that we always had with recessions and cycles. Or maybe the Fed is not going to ever tolerate a recession again, so there’ll never be one and people start saying those things. You got to run for the hills. I think that’s like my new rule of thumb. [00:12:13][64.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:12:13] Yeah, but it’s funny that you bring up the point about recession. I mean, listen, we had a recession in 2020, but the Fed and the Treasury, they threw trillions of dollars at the economy to make sure that basically we didn’t go into a depression. No one knew what was going to happen. And it was really one of the quickest recessions that we’ve had. And now there’s just this obsession among the economic class here, if you will, about are we in a recession right now? Are we going to go into one some point this year or 2023? How long will be will it be a double dip? It’s going to be different this time because the set of tools in which I think our policymakers attack them, they keep changing and they keep moving the goalposts. But here’s another one. Okay. I want to quote this is newcomer. I don’t know if you look at this newsletter, don’t worry. We’re going to talk about your newsletter. We know you have a big newsletter. We’re going to get about. [00:12:55][42.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:12:56] As interesting as these. [00:12:56][0.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:12:57] Go. I know, but I’m talking about a bunch of others before we get to yours. So this was one Sequoia is down bad. This was from June 21st. At current share prices, Sequoia’s position in unity today is worth about one and a half billion, and its position in DoorDash is worth about 2.7 billion. So together that’s 4.2. If Sequoia had sold its current holdings near the all time high of unity in DoorDash, Sequoia would have generated 18 billion in returns. Okay, so. [00:13:22][25.0]
Sahill Bloom: [00:13:22] Just stupid headline and stupid set of takeaways. Like if you sold at the absolute peak, you would have made. [00:13:26][4.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:13:27] No doubt about it. But the point I guess I would make and listen, everybody I know became a VC in the last two years who thought they knew anything about tech. Okay, I’m just telling you that. All right? And you included, buddy. Yeah. All right. No, but here’s the thing. One of the things that I find fascinating is that my friends in tech VC know so much more about early stage building of companies and how technology can do this and that or whatever to any industry. But I’m always shocked at how little they know about how valuations can expand and contract and the private markets relative to how that works in the public market. So like my point is, is like I don’t know VCs who were selling their stock that was distributed after an exit, after an IPO or whatever, they just didn’t. And then I literally have DMS from lots of my friends. I wish I was selling some of this snowflake or some of this. I guess my point is, is it’s not as dumb as you think if your business is to make early stage tech investments and the exit is the exit, whether it be M&A or whether it be IPO, then at some point you got to make a decision to take the exit. [00:14:33][66.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:14:34] So I haven’t seen the data on this. And so I’m saying this as a qualified take, but I am fairly certain that a lot of these tech IPOs that happened that VCs had been in since the early days and so like Pre-Seed seed rounds, I would imagine there is a significant amount of liquidity that was pulled out of these businesses. I don’t know any of the data and so I can’t speak to it. And frankly, Sequoia is unbelievably sophisticated and they have now that permanent capital vehicle for this exact purpose that they don’t have to think about daily swings of these things and they can recycle capital. And it’s a very sophisticated instrument. But your broader point is absolutely right. The other thing I would say that’s happening under the surface is there are VCs selling in secondary rounds in the private markets along the way. [00:15:13][39.1]
Dan Nathan: [00:15:13] And founders, by the way, that’s what’s different this time around. [00:15:16][2.8]
Sahill Bloom: [00:15:17] I won’t name any names because it’s definitely confidential, but there are a couple of well-known fintech companies, big unicorns, that a lot of people would know if I named them, that founders have taken tens of millions of dollars in secondary along the way. And right now at a market valuation, there are people selling off secondary in the tens of millions of dollars in a market that. The pricing has come down dramatically from where it was at the last round that got done that got announced. So that stuff is happening under the surface for sure. And frankly, I mean, I have some of those early angel investments that I made and have done really well. And the last round got priced up in a series B or a series or whatever, and I’ll have brokers reach out asking if I’m interested in selling secondary. And it’s still it’ll be flat to the last round. I haven’t seen the like, hey, we’ll take you out at 40% discount to last round and it’s crazy to me like I would think for some of these that have public comps that have come down that much, that you’d see offers that are 40% marked off. But it’s not I mean, there’s still demand for these tech companies that are doing well. [00:16:13][56.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:16:13] All right. So is that your takeaway from how you’re deploying capital right now? Talk to me a little bit about some of the areas that you’re focused in and how much has the volatility in the public markets and maybe some of the VC community sitting on their hands right now and waiting for Marks to come in? Like, how is that affecting what you’re doing on a daily basis? [00:16:29][15.4]
Sahill Bloom: [00:16:29] So I’m pretty fortunate because I raised my fund January through February of 2022. And if you just think about it, broad terms, a 2021 vintage fund versus a 2022 vintage fund, they’re going to look really different on average in terms of the return on that fund overall, because the 2022 vintage fund is going to get deployed into a market largely unless you deployed it really, really quickly, that is going to reprice and there’s going to be better value out there versus a 2021. If you raised in January 2021 and deployed the whole thing in 2021, it’s going to be tough because a lot of that stuff is marked off. And that’s not to say there won’t be great 2021 funds, but I think it’s going to get pinched if you just play a law that you. [00:17:04][35.2]
Dan Nathan: [00:17:05] You would have had to nail the next big. [00:17:06][1.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:17:06] a few times over because you’re going to get washed on some stuff, man. I mean, like, really wash. And I would have for sure I would have gotten suckered into doing a bunch of these high priced deals and you start normalizing it in your own mind. You look at a $40 million seed round, you say like, Oh, that’s at a $40 million valuation for an idea. And you start saying like, Well, it’s a hot deal, so I got to get into it. You convince yourself that that makes sense when it does not. Airbnb its first round was raised at a five and so you think about the return. When that becomes $1,000,000,000 company, it’s really, really different than if you did that first round of 40. [00:17:34][28.0]
Dan Nathan: [00:17:35] So Seed was an area though that I’ve heard over the last couple of months that has not really been affected at this point. [00:17:39][4.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:17:41] So it all trickles down. so, I mean, what I’ve seen, I sent out a quarterly letter recently and I talked about this. What basically what I’ve seen is it just trickles down. And I think people have talked about this in some terms of basically public markets pulled back the late stage growth stuff, pulled back first because it had to reflect the public comps. Then you have the Bs and As and is those people that are underwriting them are like, well, the markup we were getting in 2020, 2021 isn’t there. So I’m going to start being more disciplined or do not do them like the series A Series Bs just really aren’t happening. And when that happens, the people doing Pre-Seed and seed start looking at it and saying like, I have to underwrite a bit more judiciously that this company is going to have to hit certain targets for me to get marked up, to be able to go raise my X fund. And so you start seeing it trickle down and pull back. I’ve just seen anecdotally and I haven’t cranked through the data, I’ve seen a lot more pre-seed rounds, seed rounds getting done in the like low teens than I did in 2021 combined. Most of those deals, if it was a good founder, good idea, it was like in the 20 to 30 range in 2021. And now you’re seeing a lot more people taking something in the 12 to 15 range. You’re talking about it there even for a good deal, which makes a big difference when you think about it as an investor. [00:18:50][68.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:18:51] All right. So how do you think about this? You left Stanford in 2014, correct? And I’m sure there were some genius founders in that class. I know that you were an okay baseball player. Some of these other guys were doing other things and gals. This downturn that we’re in, who knows how long it’s going to last? But there’s going to be a lot of your contemporaries who went to go work at Airbnb or Coinbase or whatever the hottest thing was over the last six years. And they’re they’ll leave and they’re going to talk to you and they’re going to say, I got this great idea. I want to disintermediate this, or I want to take on this and come in. And there’s going to be some amazing companies founded right now. What is some of the chatter when you think about it, putting your angel hat back on and looking to deploy some capital at those kind of earlier stages? What sort of opportunities are you seeing right now? [00:19:32][41.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:19:33] I mean, I think it’s going to be an unbelievable time to build and to go create around these things. Right. Because what you have is that exact dynamic people that were at those big tech companies that had stock that was worth a whole ton of money. I mean, my sister in law works at Twilio and joined when it was probably at 75 or $80 a share. It went up to 400 or something. And she was super rich, actually probably worth $10 million plus as a 25 year old engineer. And now it’s only back down to 80 or so. I don’t know. It’s come all the way back down. It’s round trips and a lot of those people are looking at it and saying, well, I’d pay a big tax bill on this stuff that vested at a big price and now my stock’s way down. And so they’re leaving and they’re going and taking more entrepreneurial opportunities because now the golden handcuffs of those big tech companies and the stock packages they were offering are not quite as real. And I do think you’re going to see a lot of those people going and building really cool things in the coming years. It’s no secret that some of the coolest tech companies that have ever been built were built during bear markets and stormy seas. Make for better sailors, too. Right? [00:20:27][53.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:20:27] Matter of fact, I mean, Twilio is a great example. I mean, this company has been around for a little bit here. It’s down 80% when you think about from the dot com bubble highs in 2000. I mean, the Nasdaq sold off more than 85%. And this is different than now because the Nasdaq was just a bubble factory. When you think about it, you know, 22 years ago. And there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of earnings in a lot of these companies. I mean, 12 years. [00:20:50][22.8]
Sahill Bloom: [00:20:50] Ago, it was a real company. [00:20:51][0.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:20:51] Now Toyota is a real company. But I will say this, the stock is down 80%. It a $15 billion market cap. Okay. It’s trading about four times sales, which now looks kind of cheap when you think about a company is down 80% where it was trading on a multiple of sales. And then on an adjusted basis, they still lose money. They’re expected to lose, I don’t know, $78 million this year in net income on three point area. They’re mildly unprofitable, but they’ve been around a long time. And so you say to yourself, how long do you have to wait around for them ever to really get back on their horse? And it’s going to take a while. [00:21:26][35.2]
Sahill Bloom: [00:21:27] I mean, that’s the whole repricing of risk, right? Like you were willing to in a zero risk free rate environment, you were willing to wait for those cash flows to come. And now what the risk free rate taking up you’re not and so those companies like that that you were going to have to wait forever are getting smoked and it makes sense. But I think that the Fed has very little tolerance for any pain in the economy. And I would expect and I think the bond market is already showing this, by the way, that there’s going to be a pivot here. [00:21:51][24.2]
Dan Nathan: [00:21:51] Well, here’s the thing. So they pivoted in November. They were saying that inflationary pressures were transitory for all of 2021, and then they changed their tune in November. That is when the Nasdaq topped out. That was at that moment and that’s when crypto topped out. And it was interesting. The S&P 500 kept hanging around a little bit and didn’t top out until January. But it was all of those dozens and dozens and dozens of really high valuation tech stocks that were had been selling off. Prior to that. It was really everyone was waiting for the Microsoft, the Apple, the Google and the Amazon. And to this point, I’m looking at an S&P that’s down about 20% on the year. Nasdaq’s down about 30%. Google is down 21%. Apple is down 17 and a half percent. Microsoft is getting smacked today. We are taping this Tuesday into the close here and closed down 4%. And those stocks are kind of keeping the Nasdaq afloat. If those stocks were down 30%, the Nasdaq’s down 40 some percent from its highs. And then at that point, things are probably getting a bit more reasonable because to your point, the Fed, they might have done their job. We might have seen peak inflation, we might see unemployment tick up. We might see housing have turned over a little bit. We’ve seen a lot of the froth taken out of the stock market. Think about this man. Everything that was not bolted down, whether a Rolex watch or a Banksy or this. Now, they were going ballistic last year and if teaser everything. So we’re kind of come around here at some point. So at some point, I guess the question is if we go into a recession and the economy is too weak, then they pivot again. [00:23:21][89.7]
Sahill Bloom: [00:23:21] Tomorrow we get the inflation print right from June. It’ll be really interesting to see what happens if that ticks down. Does the Fed say like, oh, we did our job, we’re not going to raise by 75 again, we’re not going to hike. [00:23:31][10.1]
Dan Nathan: [00:23:31] They’re going to do 75 at this meeting. They kind of have to I think they’re just from a credibility stamp. [00:23:35][3.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:23:35] I do think the market rips if inflation comes in below expectations. Yeah. [00:23:38][3.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:23:39] Yeah. If it came in meaningfully. I mean, I think it is important to note that we’ve seen crude oil come in 22% from its recent highs. We’ve seen iron ore, we’ve seen copper, we’ve seen wheat. I mean, the list goes on and on. The only thing that hasn’t come in is natural gas. And that’s given, I guess, Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas. Here again, you know, let’s all be optimistic that we can actually curb inflation. Prices come down with unemployment not going too far up. Let’s talk about layoffs in the tech space right now. You advise a lot of companies probably at the stage in which you invested in a bunch of companies probably in over hire, they probably get to extended. But I’m just curious, what’s the word on the street as far as the way you’re seeing it? There’s a tracker that I have is that 300 or so private companies have laid off like 50,000 people. This is over the last few months. We know that some large tech companies are starting to do it. Oracle is debating cutting thousands. I’m just curious what your thought is on that. [00:24:30][51.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:24:31] In general, I think people are following the Paul Graham wisdom. He has an essay called Default Alive or Default Dead, I think is the name of the name of the essay, which is foundational within the tech ecosystem. All of his essays are, but I think most people are operating under the wisdom of getting to default alive status. And what that really means is just getting your operating cost structure to a place where you can at least survive to be able to go and raise another round when you have 12 months of runway at least sitting around. And I think what most people are saying is I don’t want to raise around in 2022. So let me get to a place where I at least have enough runway to get through 2023, and I can go out to market in 2023 to go and raise my next round. And that’s what I’ve seen, at least from a tech landscape standpoint. Most of these companies are doing it preemptively. They’re trying to get out in front of being in a ton of trouble. By doing it. You’re going to see the ones that are in a ton of trouble in a few months. These are the preemptive ones. [00:25:23][52.0]
Dan Nathan: [00:25:23] Here’s a good one. This is from our mutual friend Gavin Baker of Atrios Management. He tweeted this earlier was about Gopuff. It was a Bloomberg article delivery startup Gopuff cuts 10% of staff, closes warehouses to preserve cash. His comment was. Good CEOs cut early. The earlier you cut, the less you have to cut the first cut. Here was in March per the article there growing 76%. Margins are improving and they need to raise money again. We’ve heard this a lot from Rick Heitman, co-host here from First Mark, just saying that they’ve been advising their companies to move quickly, make a real cut, not death by a thousand cuts because you’re really going to find yourself. [00:25:59][35.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:26:00] Yeah I mean, if you get into that pattern of having to cut, you know, and then next round got to cut a lot more, it destroys morale. And I have a perspective in general that I think a lot of these companies got over their skis from hiring, lowered their standards on hiring. And I think a lot of the CEOs are viewing this as an opportunity to take the Jeff Bezos approach of scrubbing the decks. Bezos famously had the whole practice of 10% had to be scrubbed the bottom 10% of performers every year. And in a raging bull market that becomes frowned upon, people are like, Oh, that’s bad hiring practices they had to hire to fire things that everyone talked about where they were trying to hit turnover targets by hiring people that they knew they were going to fire. And there was a whole lot of stuff that was not great. But I think a lot of CEOs are viewing this as an opportunity to say, is that person necessary and then is that person excellent? And if not both, then you scrub them. [00:26:46][46.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:26:46] Yeah. Well, it is ironic that Bezos has been gone from Amazon for just a little more than a year. Stock’s down 40%. So it’s underperformed the NASDAQ, the S&P 500. And some of the stories that are being written in the tech rags is that Andy Jassy is left to kind of clean up the overreach of the pandemic period. So we know that they are closing warehouses, cutting people. You and I talked about this. So you consider Tim Cook, who you met, I think years ago as a bit of a mentor. You’ve had some time with Tim and everything and he’s obviously pulled off in the ten years that he’s been the CEO of Apple since Jobs passing in amazing trick the rub on him and it was in Steve Jobs book in the biography that came out the month that he died that he wasn’t a product guy. Tim Cook When you think about him presiding over a company that I think probably had in and around $100 billion in sales, maybe when he took over to over 400 billion expected this year, that sort of thing is truly remarkable and their ability to kind of maintain that 40% margin in a hardware business and then growing into services and everything. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I think he’s kind of exceeded everyone’s expectations. Let’s talk about succession at Amazon like so Sundar has done a great job over there at Google. We know that Satya over at Microsoft, I mean, these are all epic stories. Any thoughts on Jassy and what he’s got in front of him here? And again, I think expectations are low. I think there’s a lot of people would say from the moment that Jassy took over a little more than a year ago, stock’s down 40%. Is that a reflection on him now? It’s kind of like, I think, the hangover from what happened during the pandemic. Any thoughts on what the path forward is? [00:28:15][88.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:28:15] My general thought for Amazon is that they need to operate under the assumption that they’re eventually going to be split into two businesses. And I don’t know exactly who that is from, but. [00:28:24][8.7]
Dan Nathan: [00:28:24] That’s retail and then that’s cloud. [00:28:25][1.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:28:26] Based. Yeah. And I think that for the last several years they have had that as an internal operating assumption that that would eventually happen based on political wins and regulatory wins. And honestly, probably from a shareholder standpoint, it’s probably better in the long run for those two businesses to be split up. I think you could make the argument that the value is going to be higher if you do a sum of the parts there. And I think that they need to operate that way from a leadership standpoint in the long run because those two businesses are very, very different and they’re both complete juggernauts and they’re best in class within their individual markets. And so if you have a leadership that is focused on each individual one, what can you do and what can you unlock? My guess is that Jassy is sort of the steward of this era, that sort of the plug between Jeff Bezos, his leadership and the future leadership of a split company. [00:29:09][43.2]
Dan Nathan: [00:29:09] It’s interesting and. [00:29:10][0.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:29:10] Maybe it’s a contrarian take, but. [00:29:11][1.0]
Dan Nathan: [00:29:12] I think it is contrarian because I think that the history of IWC over the last 15 years has been mixed. At first it was a pillar of the Bear case. They were like, Why are they spending so much in this business they know nothing about? Right? Like so that was in the mid to late aughts. That was like a big part of the bear case. And then once it became their most profitable business, it really afforded them to do so much in their retail business that operated at a negative margin for all intents and purposes. So that’s one thing that I struggle to see whether they ever will be split up in less. It’s kind of like some sort of force sort of situation. [00:29:44][32.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:29:45] Well, I think that’s what’s going to happen, to be clear. I think it’s going to be forced in the long run. I think it’s completely insane that we think about that kind of stuff and that our regulators and that our politicians are thinking about that and not talking about the fact that Ticktalk owns a bunch of data of millions of American teenagers and China owns that. The fact that we’re not talking about that and that we’re. [00:30:03][18.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:30:04] Trump had that right [00:30:04][0.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:30:05] Yeah, he did have that right. It’s crazy to say. But that to me is like the most underreported story. [00:30:09][4.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:30:10] All right. Let’s talk about this really quickly then. We don’t really have time to get into China. And I think what’s emerging in the post-pandemic world that we live in is that we’re going to be in this bipolar sort of tech world. And that’s something that I mean, China created their firewall and then certain companies of ours were able to sell goods and services there, while others are just not. And when you think about I mean, going back to the tick tock thing, all of Tiktok’s competitors here in the U.S. don’t have the ability to. Operate in China because they’re not willing, again, to be subject to their privacy. Let’s talk a little bit about this Musk thing with Twitter. I know that you came on fast money. We talked about it a little bit ago and that was he made the bid or he basically had an agreed upon deal for the last few months. I think going back to April, he had taken a 9% stake in the company. He he’d been buying the shares in January and February, I think in the thirties. I suspect his average price was somewhere in and around where the stock is right now. So now he says he’s not going to buy the company for 44 billion, which he had agreed to do. The range of outcomes are pretty wide. Twitter suing him to close on the deal. And then there’s on the flip side of that, there’s a $1 billion breakup fee. There’s a lot of scenarios in between. And I don’t really give a shit about that. I mean, you and I could try to handicap it doesn’t really matter. What do you think about the fact, though, that he was in it for free speech? Because one of the things that I thought was we think about Tesla, the company is CEO of a huge part of that future growth of that company is China manufacturing in China, Chinese demand. So he’s got a really cozy up to the Chinese. That’s one of the reasons why that stock has a $700 billion market cap. Okay. And then on the flip side, he wants to buy Twitter for 43 billion or whatever the number is, because in the name of free speech way, overpaying for the asset, it makes no sense to me. I’m just curious your thoughts and I’m saying this, prefacing this by saying that you probably have posters of Elon Musk up in your bedroom. [00:31:59][108.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:31:59] I do not. I am far away from like a. [00:32:01][1.7]
Dan Nathan: [00:32:01] Ten year old saw he might have. Right. That’s the Kristie. [00:32:03][2.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:32:04] The extent of my Elon Musk worship is that I read that biography that was written about him, which I did think was fantastic. I’m probably one of the very few people in the world that is in the middle on Elon Musk. Like, I’m not a take a bullet for the man aficionado. I’m also not one of the people that thinks that he’s the devil in human form. Danny, I think might say he is my like mental model for Elon Musk is basically that. I think he does things that he thinks are either impactful or like fun and funny. And if they’re both, that’s great. And I think in the case of Twitter, my take is that his original perspective was that this could be impactful by taking over something that was really like an under loved asset, underperforming what it should be doing, I think by everyone’s standards in terms of the power that it has, but also fun and funny, right, to like go by Twitter and be able to tweet stupid shit and and laugh about it, you know, like make 69 jokes in a to. [00:32:56][51.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:32:56] Two by the cow when you get the milk for free. He was already doing that and one of the most followed because he can he’s. [00:33:01][5.0]
Sahill Bloom: [00:33:01] Like you know playboy billionaire. Right. [00:33:03][1.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:33:03] But like that’s the funny thing. Can he, though, is the question because it doesn’t appear he doesn’t have a whole heck of a lot of wealth outside of his Tesla shares or SpaceX. [00:33:11][8.4]
Sahill Bloom: [00:33:12] If that’s what has played out right, is that I think the if I were a detractor and I think like Josh Wolfe has made a great case of this on Twitter and elsewhere, saying basically this was an elaborate ruse to sell seven and a half billion dollars of Tesla stock. And you didn’t really have a way to do that like you can if you’re the CEO of a company, you’re its largest shareholder. You can’t just go dump seven and a half billion dollars of stock without a whole lot of people asking questions. This gave him a way to do that. And now if the outcome ends up being that he has to pay $1 billion breakup fee to get out of this deal, pretty good trade you got out of seven and a half billion dollars. You have to pay a billion plus, maybe 200 in legal fees and you end up getting out of it. The other outcome, though, which is the most interesting one in my mind, is specific performance, right? Does he actually get forced to close this deal by the Delaware courts? It would. [00:33:56][44.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:33:56] Be amazing. [00:33:57][0.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:33:57] It would be a pretty amazing outcome, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. My best guess is he pays a billion and they walk and it’s done. [00:34:02][5.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:34:03] But I don’t think of him the way Danny Moses does. I think of him as a bully. I think of as a guy who punches down. I think of him as a guy who comes across as something that is not he didn’t invent the electric vehicle. He didn’t invent rockets that can go to outer space. I think he’s. [00:34:18][15.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:34:18] The best salesman of all time or one of them or best market or best salesman. [00:34:22][3.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:34:22] And I say this routinely, man, you know, I’ve been in the markets for 25 years and I’ve seen lots of cult stories and lots of cult leaders as it relates to markets. And one of the things and this goes back to transparency, it goes back to regulatory structure, it goes back to mark to market is like every single one of these bubbles that have inflated in and around a cult and the cult status of its leader, they’ve all blown up every single one of us. [00:34:46][23.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:34:46] So do you think this is going to blow up? [00:34:47][0.4]
Sahill Bloom: [00:34:48] You think? Put your prediction. Add on. Yeah. We’re sitting here in 25 years. I don’t know how old you’re going to be. I’ll be. [00:34:53][5.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:34:54] 75. [00:34:54][0.0]
Sahill Bloom: [00:34:55] 56 years old. We’re sitting here we’re sitting here in 25 years. Elon Musk today I’m 31, is sort of like the closest thing we have to like a little God like feature on it. Well. [00:35:04][9.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:05] I mean. [00:35:05][0.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:35:06] Just like in general, but like some people hate I know he’s a virgin God. [00:35:09][3.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:10] I mean, I look at him and I think he’s a scam. I think he’s one of these guys who’s got like one of these super churches in the sky. I really do. And so, again, there’s been enough very sophisticated investors, you know, with huge pools of capital who bought into it. There’s been legions of individual. [00:35:25][15.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:35:26] Companies, right. Like Space X literally is landing rocket, of course. And they’re sending out Tesla is a real car. I have Teslas, they’re great cars. I actually really like them. [00:35:34][8.0]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:35] They’re shitty. Honestly I think they’re really shitty and I. [00:35:38][3.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:35:39] So you think but you think in 25 years when we’re sitting here, what does he get is going to be a popper. [00:35:42][3.8]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:43] I think Elon Musk is not going to be the CEO of Tesla within two years. I don’t think he’s in jail. I think. Well, can I. [00:35:49][5.8]
Sahill Bloom: [00:35:49] Make a public. [00:35:49][0.2]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:49] Bet? Yeah, right now. [00:35:50][0.7]
Sahill Bloom: [00:35:50] All right, let’s make a public bet. What do we want to put a dinner at dinner at Four Charles? [00:35:53][3.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:35:54] Oh, geez. And it’s going to be the most epic dinner. Okay? In two years, he will not be the CEO of that company. And I’ll tell you why. He’s become a huge liability, in my opinion. Like think of all the legal liability that he is taking on. If he is forced if the Delaware courts forced him to close on that deal and he doesn’t do it. Think of the liability. When he said funding was secured a couple of years ago, he had to pay the SEC a big fine. He actually had to leave as the chairman of the board of Tesla. I think it’s going to become a situation in the not so distant future where Tesla shareholders are going to think they’re better off without him at the helm. They’re better off with all the shenanigans. [00:36:29][35.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:36:30] So you think he’s going to get voted out, CEO to. [00:36:32][2.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:36:32] Be pushed out. Hey, let me ask you this. His really good friend. Oh, you’re looking at your wife. [00:36:36][3.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:36:36] No, no, I’m I’m starting to say, well, okay, what’s the date? So it’s July 12th, 2020 to July 12th, 2024 is the closure. [00:36:42][6.1]
Dan Nathan: [00:36:42] This bad is out. [00:36:43][0.6]
Sahill Bloom: [00:36:44] And it’s a dinner at Four Charles. [00:36:45][0.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:36:45] Yeah. Here’s the thing. So Larry Ellison, his good buddy, I’m sure he helped him with his alt right turn. That’s another thing that I’m going to tell you this. So here’s a guy who literally said that he voted for this woman, Myra Flores. She pushes all of these Jan six conspiracy theories. Okay. She just won a special elections in Texas. He can vote in Texas now because he was so disgusted with California. Move to Texas. Okay. He said he’s probably going to vote for Ron DeSantis for president in 2024. They don’t believe in climate change. They don’t believe he’s he’s alienating the core Tesla customer. And we haven’t really seen it yet. I suspect that the quarter they report on July 20th is not going to be particularly great. I think we’re going to see a stock go much lower. The lower the stock goes, the less likelihood that he can buy Twitter and everything like that, which makes it more likely that he’s going to be in default of this agreement and there’s going to be other repercussions. And let me ask you this. Going back to Larry Ellison. He quietly left the board a couple of weeks ago on the Friday. No one’s talking about it. The media is that time. [00:37:43][57.8]
Sahill Bloom: [00:37:43] I didn’t even know that. [00:37:44][0.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:37:44] Yeah, no one’s talking about it. And so I just think he’s a big liability. All right, we got our back. We got two years. Let me just hit a couple of things. We’re going to take a break in a minute. And we want to get to a bunch of stuff that you’re doing. I think anyone is listening to this podcast. They follow you on Twitter. They read the Curiosity Chronicle, which is your newsletter. I want to talk about your podcast, want to talk about all that, but really quickly, I want to get your opinion on this. So I’m like labeled the heel on CNBC’s Fast Money like the kind of perma bear that my is. So in the last month I have bought a handful of Nasdaq stocks. Oh, okay. So I bought SNAP when it was down like 80%. And part of my thought process was a relative valuation of Twitter, what Musk was willing to pay for it. The revenue base that they each have is kind of similar. Snap’s growing much faster. It’s monetizing much better. It doesn’t have potentially all the social issues. Let’s say platform like Twitter has a great leader. And Evan SPIEGEL, who’s really since his early days since they went public in 17, has really avoided a lot of pitfalls. So to me, that one looks really interesting that I’ve never bought , I’ve never been long that I bought that a couple of weeks ago. And when I think about it, I’m not a huge Zuckerberg fan either, but I think that they have 3 billion monthly active users and they have 125 million revenue base. And even if that were to contract on their core advertising business, I feel like they’re going to figure out what the thing is not going to be the metaverse, it’s going to be some functionality of the metaverse, and they’re going to be able to kind of make that work. I’m thinking with two, three year time horizon. PayPal, another one down nearly 80%. And I really like the opportunities overseas. Netflix. I actually think Netflix has this amazing opportunity to kind of turn on ads and do a whole host of new things. So curious, your thoughts on that? I still think the market bottoms from lower levels, but I’m dollar cost averaging and a longer term view and some of those names. [00:39:29][104.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:39:29] I’ve been doing the same and tech stuff so I’m not a single name stock buyer, never have been. I buy like VTG tags, which are like the Vanguard Tech focused funds. [00:39:38][9.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:39:39] Shout out Tommy. [00:39:39][0.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:39:40] I don’t know anything about PayPal. I would not buy Netflix personally because I just don’t believe that they’re going to be able to turn that business model around. But Metta and Snap, I love those. I mean, I think both of those CEOs fit my mold of wartime generals, and I think they’re going to navigate the environment well. I think SNAP is really well positioned to do well in this changing environment. Do I think they’re going to get smoked for the short term around like ad spend? If we’re in a recession? Probably they’re really well positioned to do well and look better. People sleep on WhatsApp, the world literally runs on one WhatsApp. [00:40:07][27.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:40:08] And they’re not monetizing. [00:40:08][0.3]
Sahill Bloom: [00:40:08] And they’re not monetizing it. And it is an amazing platform that everyone sort of forgets that medicines. [00:40:13][4.6]
Dan Nathan: [00:40:14] Agree and all that. The one thing I would say is you spend a lot of time thinking about transformative CEOs. I think Reed Hastings is one of them. I think they were late to acknowledge this kind of password sharing thing and that they knew it existed. They knew other ways in which they could monetize users who weren’t paying for subscriptions. I just think they’re going to figure something out there. And the one thing I would say is on that index level, I would say. Q. Q You think about the Nasdaq 100, those top five names. We all know what they are. They make up 40% of the weight of that index. And then there’s dozens of stocks are down 60, 70, 80%. And a bunch of them are going to be up to three, four acts off of these lows. And I also think those top names are going to be the ones that lead us into the next bull market. They will not be disintermediated. [00:40:54][39.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:40:55] I try to make sure that I don’t outsmart myself. By the way, just from a public market investing standpoint, I tend to find that, like when I overthink things and try to think of myself as an expert, I do dumb shit. And so what I do is I just avoid that by doing the dumb thing of just buying index funds. [00:41:10][14.7]
Dan Nathan: [00:41:10] Well, especially if you’re dollar cost average. [00:41:11][1.5]
Sahill Bloom: [00:41:12] That’s what I do. [00:41:12][0.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:41:12] Listen, I think there’s another gap. I think there’s another guy down from all of those companies that we just mentioned because they were starting to signal some of the issues in the ad market. This is going back to the fall when we saw gaps out of SNAP. [00:41:23][11.0]
Sahill Bloom: [00:41:24] And I said this on fast money. [00:41:25][1.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:41:25] I know. Yeah. My point is, is like and I see this to people who are new to the stock market or new to bear markets. Actually, it’s like, listen, you don’t go in with a full position. You got to think about like, I’m going to buy it on its way coming to me. And I think that’s the way to think about the Nasdaq 100 or any of these individual names that you want to look to play for a longer term time horizon. All right, man, let’s take a quick break, because I want to get back to all the stuff that you are doing individually. So stick around. “Current Ad” “Masterworks Ad” “Taboola Ad” All right. So when we started this conversation, I saw you on a CNBC video at the time, you had a very modest Twitter following, but you were tweeting some smart stuff primarily on tech. And then you really made a concerted effort to create content. Talk to me a little bit about this, because right now you have a Twitter feed with, I think over a half a million followers. You have some of the most engaged tweets and tweet threads that I see in the in the universe of people that I follow and that I engage with. And it’s smart stuff. You have a podcast, you have a newsletter that’s widely followed. Talk to me a little bit about how you thought about using these different mediums to kind of create content, build audience, build engagement, and what’s the end game with it? [00:44:56][210.8]
Sahill Bloom: [00:44:56] You know, it’s interesting because I’m a planner by nature. I’ve always like thought far out in advance and thought about what am I going to do? What’s the path? Where am I going to go with this? And this has been the one pursuit in my life that I have never been able to plan around. And I think it’s because of the nature of the Internet and the nature of virality and the nature of exponential growth. And what really happened, you know, when we met, I probably had like four or 5000 Twitter followers or something like that. That was the only platform I was creating on. I didn’t have a newsletter, I didn’t have a podcast. I thought I was famous. I mean, like 5000 followers. I called my dad and I was like, Dad, I’m out here. Like 5000 people are out here following me. This is wild. And what happened was it just started snowballing and it started compounding. And what I did was I sort of let my audience lead me into new things. What happened with the newsletter was that people were saying they wanted to read it in a different format and go deeper on the things that I was talking about in shorter form on Twitter. And so I started the newsletter, started putting more effort into that as it scaled. Written content was always my main medium. And so what I realized as I continue to build that, that you can only go so deep with people in terms of the relationship you build with them when it’s written. People can read your content, they might really like it, but if they’re not seeing your face, there’s not that additional layer of connectivity. And I realized that if I wanted to build that, if I really wanted to build community around this and build those type of relationships, I had to expand into things that were more my face out there, and it was video and audio. And so the podcast was a great medium for that eventually. And I’m not going to say anything that breaks any secrets, but eventually write a book. You’ll definitely see more video stuff. As I continue to expand on this, I really want to build something meaningful. I want to impact people at scale. The size of the platform has amazed me and I hope that it will influence people in a positive way. There’s always haters out there and you know, you get like mean messages when you’re on social media at scale. But if I get a mean message for every 50 really nice messages of the positive impact, something I wrote or said had on someone’s life, I’ll take that trade all day. [00:46:48][111.4]
Dan Nathan: [00:46:48] Well, I think that you share something where you talked about like techno optimism that you kind of learn being out there in the Bay Area and, you know, our mutual friend Packing McCormick, I think he has a very optimistic view in all of his writing and the stuff that he shares. And he takes a lot of heat sometimes because he’s really trying to focus on what could go right. Our friend Clio Abrams, huge, if true, when you think about some of the work that she does as a creator. And I think it’s great stuff. What’s the criticism that you hear frequently about your content that makes you think twice sometimes? You know what I mean? Like saying, you know what? Maybe that’s correct. You know what I mean? Maybe I’m over indexing to this. Yeah. [00:47:24][36.1]
Sahill Bloom: [00:47:24] I mean, my content is very different from those folks you mentioned because I’m not when I first started, I was creating content that was basically finance explainers. Like I was sort of one of the first people on Twitter that was doing these, abstracting the complexity around business and finance. That was what I was doing. Now I would say my content is much more like a modern version of a Tim Ferriss, James Clear. It’s like personal improvement, gross productivity, focus, those type of topics. And that’s mainly because that’s what interests me most. I love thinking about that kind of stuff, how I can better myself, how I can grow. I’m writing more about fatherhood and about life and wealth in a broader context today and the importance of building wealth that is outside financial wealth in your life and finding fulfillment and different things you do. I get criticisms all the time that’s like, oh, cringe, self-help nonsense, you know, whatever things like that, the things people say about all these guys. And my take always is, I totally agree with you. It’s not for everybody. If you don’t like the shit that I’m writing, unfollow me. Don’t read it, block me, mute me. I couldn’t care less. Because for every person that says that kind of stuff, there’s a bunch of people that benefit from it. And even if it’s 5050, like even if it’s not for 50% of the world, totally fine. I mean, I’ve had people reach out to me being like, it’s not for me because I’m an experienced business person. I don’t really need this, but my junior people on my team love it and I share stuff with them because it helps them think through these things. Great. If it’s not for you, don’t read it. Don’t follow it. Like I’m not. I’m not forcing anyone to do it. [00:48:46][81.5]
Dan Nathan: [00:48:46] I’ll just say this is a guy who’s about to turn 50. I’ve been on Wall Street, if you will, for 25 years. And you get a little cynical here and there about some of this. So I read all your stuff and sometimes I like I get exactly what you’re saying. It’s like if I’m 30 or 31, right? Like if I’m 31 years old and I’m reading that it might be the first time a 31 year old entrepreneur or like an investor or something like that is getting that from someone in their age group. I think that it makes a lot of sense. I mean. [00:49:13][27.2]
Sahill Bloom: [00:49:13] The other thing I need to do a better job of reflecting on this is getting across the fact that I am not attempting to teach people things that I know. I am attempting to share things that I am learning along the way. And that is a really important nuance and point. I’m not saying, like, I figured all of this out, I’m holier than thou and look how smart I am and how great I am at all of these things. I’m just battling these things in real time. And I know that if I am, millions of other people are. And if I can share those things that I’m learning or ideas or insights I’m picking up, that might have improved it a little bit along the way. Great. [00:49:45][31.3]
Dan Nathan: [00:49:45] Yeah. I think the main point there is you’re talking about sharing this is not you trying to teach other people that are coming along the ride with you as as you’re learning on yourself. You just mentioned also early about fatherhood. I got to give you a shout out. I know you and I have talked about it. Your lovely wife, you guys had a baby a couple months ago here. You’re beaming right now. The listener can’t see it, but they’ve also seen some of your threads and some of the stuff. How has that kind of changed how you’re thinking about this again? You’re not trying to push content on people. You’re trying to kind of share some of your experiences and how it’s influencing your thoughts here. And I have a feeling that it’s definitely been an impactful couple of months for you. [00:50:21][35.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:50:21] Yeah, I mean, I just think about it constantly. So I’m sharing things about my real life, right? Like I’m sharing more pictures and things and experiencing fatherhood. And I’ve had a ton of people reach out to me saying, I used to be really afraid of being a parent. You’re kind of making it look like it could be fun or it could be cool. And look, I’m not sharing the like when you’re up in the middle of the night and a kid screaming and you’re trying to get him to go back to sleep pictures. But I think there’s like a level of cynicism that still exists around parenthood that I find funny and false where people just say like, Oh, have fun, not sleeping ever again, or you’re not going to be able to get as much work done, or you’re not going to progress the way you used to. Like, people just say those things. And it’s part of the schtick that people say about parenting, and I just haven’t found it to be true. And I think it’s like it’s part of this tyranny of the or where you feel like you have to choose between having a wife or having kids. And I just completely reject it. And I think the more I can share that, you can have both and you can have wealth and all of these different ways in your life, the better off we will be for people that listen to it. [00:51:14][52.7]
Dan Nathan: [00:51:14] Yeah, matter of fact, listen. But it’s been a joy getting to know you over the last couple of years. I really appreciate your friendship. I also have learned a whole heck of a lot from your content you can check out Saw Help Bloom obviously on Twitter at Sawhill Bloom. Also, you can subscribe to his newsletter, The Curiosity Chronicle, over 100,000 subscribers there, and you get a whole other host of stuff going on. So thanks for dropping by. Okay. Computer It’s my sincere pleasure. [00:51:39][24.9]
Sahill Bloom: [00:51:40] This was a blast. Thanks, Dan. [00:51:41][0.9]
Dan Nathan: [00:51:41] Thanks. But thanks again to our presenting sponsor Current and our supporters Masterworks and Taboola for bringing you this episode of okay Computer. If you like what you heard, make sure you hit, follow and leave us a review. It helps people find our show and we want to hear from you. Email us at contact at risk reversal dot com follow and connect with us on Twitter at okay computer pod. We’ll see you next time. [00:51:41][0.0]
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