Trump's Cabinet, Google's Quantum Chip, Apple's Flop, TikTok, State of VC with bestie Keith Rabois

The episode opens with the familiar All-In introductions and some light talk about a recent holiday special and an upcoming ski trip. The hosts present the panel, and Keith Rabois is introduced as the guest sitting in for David Sacks, who is described as unable to attend this week.

The introduction treats the guest as a believer in strong executive control. Asked whether company CEOs should be dictators, the reply is "Yes, actually". It ties that view to Brian Chesky's idea of "founder mode" and mentions a recent New York conference on hiring for founder-mode companies. The question there was how hiring for such founders differs from hiring at a large company like Google. The same exchange also makes a broader political point: dictators are not good for society or America, but "it's not always America's job to fix all of that."

The career summary given covers Stanford with Sacks and Peter Thiel, PayPal, LinkedIn after Reid left PayPal to start it, a period at Slide, joining Square as its 20th employee, and then venture capital from 2013. That venture career is described as six years at Khosla Ventures followed by about five at Founders Fund.

One question asks how an operator ends up in venture and then moves between firms, since these jobs are usually seen as permanent. The answer describes a common route: executives build relationships with their board members, who later recruit them. The examples are Roelof Botha, PayPal's CFO, whom Mike Moritz recruited to Sequoia, and Ravi at Sequoia, formerly Instacart's COO and CFO, also recruited by Moritz. The speaker says they had Vinod Khosla on Square's board and had wanted to be a VC since 2003, writing many angel checks while working operating jobs.

Venture is described as "a job for life," with a 15- to 20-year commitment, so starting too late does not make sense. The same reasoning explains turning down a government role. Technology is moving fast, and someone cannot step away from the network-building side of venture for two to five years and come back at 50. The speaker says they are only 12 years into venture, sees the next five to 10 years as the "sweet spot," and wants to watch portfolio companies grow and go public. Politics might come later, but "it's a decade out."

The question is worded as why the guest left Founders Fund for Khosla, but the answer describes leaving Khosla after six years. The stated reason is the commute. Khosla had a single office on Sand Hill Road with in-office work every day, and the speaker thought investing's future was more in San Francisco than Palo Alto. They "despised" spending 45 minutes in a car each way. Founders Fund was in the city, and the speaker had known Peter Thiel since college. The speaker frames this with hindsight about COVID, which changed how people work.

you're human, and every single study of human happiness is inversely correlated to your commute time.

The speaker attributes that line to Sam Altman, given in response to the question of whether changing funds mainly over a commute was crazy.

The comparison of the two firms comes with specific claims. Both are described as great funds with strong returns, but they invest at different stages. Founders Fund is called a momentum investor, "maybe the best on the planet" at it. The speaker says almost every successful Founders Fund investment across eight funds entered at a $500 million or higher valuation, with Anduril and Ramp as the only exceptions. At Khosla, almost every investment across eight funds is said to have been a seed or Series A. The one exception given is Stripe, which the speaker says they led around 2013, at an initial valuation an order of magnitude higher than any other Khosla first investment.

From this the speaker calls Khosla "input-driven" and Founders Fund "output-driven." Great tech companies exist in both styles, with Amazon and Apple named as input-driven examples. Different people do well in each, and the speaker says they fit "really, really well" at Khosla.

The speaker prefers to invest as early as possible, ideally when there is only a keynote deck with no product and no metrics. The claim is that almost no one else in venture is good at that stage. Asked what gets an investor from a deck to a check, the answer is founder assessment alone:

Is this founder capable of building an iconic company, period?

The speaker argues metrics only "confuse you" at that point. They also concede that many investors are very good once product and financial metrics exist, which is one more reason to compete earlier. A second preference is company building, meaning helping a founder raise the size or odds of success. The speaker notes that this is "very controversial" at Founders Fund.

Another participant then describes having both firms as lead investors, at Climate and now at Ohalo. In that account, Founders Fund's approach is to find great founders and get out of the way, without trying to help, because a founder who needs help is not the kind they want. Khosla is described as hands-on: adding board members, introducing commercial partners and acting as a participatory board member. The participant calls the two models very different and "both very valuable."

The same participant gives a concrete case for the hands-off style. When some Climate Corp board members disliked the company's strategy, Founders Fund stepped in, rallied the rest of the board to protect the founder at a crucial moment, and the company had a "massive exit within a year."

The talk turns to politics, starting with joking speculation about Brian Singerman leaving Founders Fund and what ambassadorship he might take, plus references to Kenny Howery and Sweden. It drifts into jokes about the U.S. adding the 51st through 54th states, with "Canada's coming on board."

Then comes an announcement: Jacob, the husband of the participant being addressed, is joining the administration. He is described as becoming in effect the country's chief economic officer, building foreign policy from a business standpoint. The argument is that economic success is the basis of world power. The example given is World War II, where the U.S. economy could outproduce Germany, Russia and Japan combined. The account also repeats Trump's claim of the "best economy ever before COVID" in his first term, with the hedge that it "may be true."

The role is named as undersecretary of state for economic affairs. The speaker complains that Democrats and "woke people" added items such as the environment to the title, and hopes those will be removed. A host then notes that the administration does not share a single view. Jacob's position on TikTok differs from others', and Trump himself is said to have "flip-flopped a little bit" on it.

On how Trump handles this range of opinion, one view is that he asks many people many questions before deciding. That is why he seems unpredictable to some, including the media: he does not rely on one input, so the output can never be fully predicted. The speaker describes dinners where Trump went around a room of 28 people asking each for their view on a topic, while noting they have not spent much time with him.