All In Podcast Host Jason Calacanis Overviews Liquidity Summit in Napa Valley

Well, you know, we're in a boom right now. And that boom is based on AI. And a lot of people who are here have invested in companies like xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Infrastructure, Cerebras. And so we've all known this wave is coming. And now many of the companies going public, as you well know. We're going to have three huge ones in probably a six-month period. Right after Cerebras was also a big one. So SpaceX and of course Anthropic filed.

OpenAI. And then, you know, there's the other market activity happening like Google is doing a capital raise of 80 billion to keep up with the raise. All of this has second-order, third-order effects. Fancy way of saying what happens to the money and the capital? All this money's being made, all this money's being raised and deployed. So what happens with all that capital? You've got people who've owned SpaceX shares for two decades. And OpenAI shares for 10 years, etc. All of that money's going to be recirculated. What does it get recirculated in? Well, if you happen to own some San Francisco Bay Area real estate, and I happen to, I left San Francisco in the Bay Area years ago, but I have three properties there. And the wife handles these and she's incredible at picking them. We're like, if there was a time to sell, and so I literally I'm going to put my three California properties on the market. And I'm going to allow people to offer SpaceX, OpenAI, or Anthropic shares for the properties.

Because people need homes. And what's the first thing you do when you make a hundred million or a billion is you upgrade the house.

So, I'm going to be selling some. We're just going real estate, I think. I'm being a bit facetious, but it's true. But more importantly, you're going to have people who worked really hard in these companies for 10 years.

Maybe have had very little liquidity if any. Be able to then graduate from these companies and start the next generation companies, become LPs in venture funds, and angel investing companies. That's the magic of the technology industry. I've been in it for 30 years. The generosity people have in our industry and the pay-it-forward nature, which is just built into the philosophy. You know, you look at Hollywood, you look at finance and Wall Street, the business you're in. You know, those can be insular at times. It's hard to break in. People always talk about breaking into Hollywood, breaking into the music business, breaking into finance and Wall Street. In technology, you just show up and you're in. And you say, 'Hey, I'm doing a startup.' or 'I need advice.' or 'I'm thinking about joining a startup.' And then you will be invited to 10 parties, people will talk to you, people will give you advice with no expectation of return. It's the most generous, open community in the world. Now, sometimes, you know, things in technology cause other second and third-order effects in society. Tech industry has to be better about managing, I think, the reputation of our industry and we see that with AI. People will lose their job displacement, job loss. But putting all that aside, it's going to be an incredible super cycle of new companies. I am an early-stage investor. I invest in a hundred new companies per year at my fund launch and at a program we do called Founder University around the world. And so, what I'm seeing on the ground is a Cambrian explosion in startups. More people. Sometimes they're laid off from Meta or Microsoft as they downsize and automate. And those folks are like, 'You know what? I got laid off. I got a 24-month severance package, cashed out my RSUs. I'm good for 3, 4, 5 years. I think I'll start a company. Great for me.' That's the amazing thing about the American economy. And the entrepreneurial spirit here. That's why America keeps winning. And every time they say we're going to get beat by Japan, we're going to get beat by China, we're going to get beat by, you know, pick the country, pick the threat. It's a new one every 10, 20 years. The entrepreneurs in this country, that pay-it-forward nature and innovation continues to drive our economy. If you look at the top 50 publicly traded companies, you know, it's going to be 40 of them are from America.

Yeah, so you know, we do something called the All-In Summit. That is for 3,000 people. And we'll be doing our fifth this year in Los Angeles. And that's a bit more accessible. And you'll meet some of the, you know, the top 1% of the audience. Here, this is the top 0.1% of the audience. And so, we have created this very interesting events and community. Events business, but it's more like a community. And folks come back to each one. And my philosophy of events is very straightforward. If you come to the event, and one of three things happens, you're going to come back again. Just one. If you make a great contact, a new friend, or just a business contact. If you have a great experience, you enjoy the wine, the city. I mean, look at this. Like, if you enjoy the experience, and if you learn something. And if you look at an event like this, you can't not enjoy Thomas Keller and Jan Fel and the extraordinary hospitality. This is the 0.1% of our audience, All-In's audiences. Extraordinary on average, but to, you know, be the one in a thousand audience members who comes to this, everybody here is incredibly interesting. Met a woman and her husband who came, big fans of the show. They said I brought you a gift, this is chocolate from France. I said, 'Oh my god, I love chocolate. How did you know?'