Podcast, Interview
E29: Coinbase goes public, direct listings vs. IPOs, unions & more with Bestie Guestie Brad Gerstner
All-In PodcastBrad Gerstner, Chamath, Calacanis, David Sacks, Friedberg, Bezos, Drew Holden, Josh Hawley
- Brad Gershner predicts the 10-year Treasury yield will return to January 2020 levels, projecting a 10% to 20% drawdown in growth multiples for every 1% yield increase, with an additional 10% to 20% decline expected if yields settle at 1.8%; this outlook anticipates further public market multiple compression over the next three months, driving institutional deleveraging of growth positions, while expecting a resolution to private market valuation inversion that could lead to significant losses similar to the Groupon and Zynga trajectories.
- Long-term expectations include holding a basket of the top 30% of global technology companies for five to ten years to capture asymmetric rewards, with Bitcoin forecasts predicting a return to a 500x all-time high multiple achieved through earnings growth; institutional investors are expected to favor direct listings and open day-one trading over traditional IPOs with lockup periods, viewing the latter as unfair taxes on long-term workers, while SPACs are projected to evolve toward providing operational support and capital market infrastructure for founders.
- David Sacks forecasts that median employee tenure at companies like Uber and Tesla will remain low at 1.8 and 2.1 years respectively, and predicts the Alabama unionization vote will result in a 70% rejection of unions; he anticipates state-level policy differences will drive economic migration from anti-capitalist states to Texas and Florida, while expecting public sector unions to face structural inflation challenges due to a lack of market mechanisms for price discovery.
- Regarding pandemic response, speakers expect "zeroism" to fail as a strategy, leading to a permanent non-zero risk environment where vaccination rates cap at 60% to 65% and public compliance with mandates erodes; the CDC's pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is forecast to reduce vaccination polling by 15 points, and a loss of institutional credibility is expected to shift risk assessment toward decentralized alternatives like Bitcoin.
- Chamath Palihapitiya outlines an "Invest America" plan to raise $100 million within three months to provide $2,000 direct investments to families, projecting this 8% annual return will grow to approximately $300,000 by age 65; Amazon is valued as "cheap" at 13 times one year's customer savings, and the proposal is framed as a way to build an ownership society without government intervention.
- Jason Calacanis and David Sacks highlight expected media double standards regarding the Afghanistan withdrawal and political inconsistencies, predicting these will further degrade public trust; policy expectations include a potential recall election in California within five to six months, a "third way" of capitalism combining free markets with social initiatives, and the rise of "mob rule" as a reaction to perceived institutional failures.
- Structural economic risks include the failure of government market mechanisms in education and healthcare leading to inflation, the potential for Josh Hawley's proposed $100 billion M&A ban to remain performative legislation that nonetheless removes exit routes for venture capital, and the expectation that future IPOs will rely on curated cap tables to avoid ownership randomization.