About Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis, co-host of the All-In podcast and founder of LAUNCH, has been active on his podcast and at events discussing investment strategy, the technology industry, and political dynamics. In October 2024, he outlined his investing philosophy, emphasizing backing a team's vision over hype and dollar-cost averaging into companies one believes in. He described Elon Musk as having a gift for pursuing multiple visions concurrently and argued that criticism of valuation hand-wringing stems from an inability to tolerate ambiguity across multiple business lines. In mid-2026, Calacanis moderated the All-In Liquidity Summit in Napa Valley, describing it as an event for the "top 0.1%" of the podcast's audience, with 550 capital allocators representing $7 trillion in capital present. He stated that the event was part of a broader community-building effort and that his philosophy for events is that attendees return if they make a great contact, have a great experience, or learn something.
Calacanis has also commented on the current tech boom, which he attributed to AI, noting that companies like xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic are going public. He described seeing "a Cambrian explosion in startups" and said he personally invests in roughly 100 new companies per year through his fund LAUNCH and a program called Founder University. In a May 2026 appearance on the Bulwark Podcast, Calacanis discussed why some in Silicon Valley have been reluctant to criticize President Trump, arguing that access to the administration to shape policy is preferable to not having one's phone calls returned. He also described former President Trump's handling of Iran as "an unmitigated disaster" and said he believed it would "kill his presidency." Additionally, Calacanis has been publicly critical of Mark Zuckerberg, stating that the Meta CEO has "damaged the reputation of the industry" by repeatedly prioritizing self-interest over what Calacanis described as the right thing for humanity, including in matters of privacy and content moderation.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Jason Calacanis's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Jason Calacanis0:00
One of the crazy things retail investors can do is just buy crypto out of pure greed, put their entire net worth into it, and try to double their money in a year. Not advisable. Another thing they can do is sit it out and not participate and not buy, you know, 1% of their net worth or 2% of their net worth into Bitcoin when it hit 10 or 20K, and then they miss a 7X, you know, whatever 10X, whatever reasonably they would have gotten.
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Alex0:24
So, understand the public is enthusiastic about this future as presented by SpaceX, and they're generally smart.
J
Jason Calacanis0:33
Right.
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Alex0:34
They will do weird things like overpay or sell when things go down, so they get emotion. The emotion of retail investors, it's the nature of the markets. Things can be overvalued, undervalued. It really doesn't matter. What you have to look at is over 10 years, over 20 years, what has the person done? And if you look at SpaceX, the cost of putting a kilogram in space has plummeted because of this company. If you look at Tesla, the number of self-driving cars on the road, the number of lives saved, the drive towards electrification of cars, and all the copycat companies, these things created categories. So, you can rest assured that if Elon was able to create these two categories and manifest them and manifest Starlink, he's going to manifest more things. He's going to, just through sheer force of will and as an aggregator of extreme talent, he is going to solve problems that are big and audacious that change the world. That's the other piece. He is a magnet for engineering talent. If you're an engineer, going to work at Facebook and tweaking ads to make them 5% or .05%, you know, five bips more effective, that makes you want to kill yourself after four or five years. You feel pretty empty inside. Now, you might feel great when you look at your bank account, but after four years or maybe two 4-year stints at those kind of companies, the most talented people are like, 'I've got like 10 years left in my career. I want to make it count. I want to do something with purpose.' And then they go join Elon Musk.
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Jason Calacanis2:08
Yeah.
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Alex2:09
I see it all the time. They join a company that is mission-focused and that's doing something important in the world. Retail investors, sure. They're emotional at times. Sure, they maybe don't do price discovery or they just, you know, YOLO it. Okay, fine. But ultimately, having the public be able to invest in these companies earlier is really the story here. Those same retail investors wouldn't have made this bet 10 years ago and 20 years ago. We need to have a sophisticated investor test so all Americans, independent of their station in life, can participate in private company markets. Why? The value's created in the private market. You should have been able to buy SpaceX, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb, Coinbase when they were private companies. If you were a user of those companies, you knew how special those products were. Every person who bought a Roadster or a Tesla Model S should have been able to participate in those companies before they were public.
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Jason Calacanis3:06
Right.
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Alex3:06
That's the real crime in this country, I have to say, is that rich people have rigged the markets in cahoots with regulators that only the rich, only the top 1% called qualified purchasers, net worth of 5 million or above liquid, not counting your home, or accredited investors, 6% 200,000 a year in annual revenue or income, I believe. Only those people are capable of making these bets? I call BS.
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Jason Calacanis3:34
Yeah.
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Alex3:35
If you can bet on the Spurs or the Nets or the Jets, even, or you can play Blackjack and think you have some sort of edge or something.
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Jason Calacanis3:42
Markets, you can bet on anything you want now. You could bet that the world is your oyster for betting. But, exactly.
We need to allow the public to participate in private markets. That's what the big story here is, and as you know, I'm obsessed with a lot of technologies including my Plaud pen. It's time for us to applaud. Golf clap. Plaud. As you can see here, I have it on my t-shirt. How did I get it on my t-shirt? I didn't use the clip you usually see me use when I'm wearing a suit. Well, I'm in Tahoe, so I'm not suited up. It has a magnetic one, so you can put it right behind you. Then, Alex, I got you on the Plaud train. I'm recording my Plaud right now. So, if I have any ideas, like hmm I should go to the emergency room and get my pinky which I dislocated playing basketball yesterday, and make sure I send a note, I can do that. And you just flashed your Plaud, Alex, and you're using the attachment that lets you wear it like a wristband.
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Jason Calacanis4:37
It's kind of cool, too. It's totally privacy first because you have a button, you press it, the red light goes on. Everybody knows what you're doing. For meetings, it's amazing. People say, 'Well, why wouldn't you just use your phone?' Getting your phone out, opening an app, starting it, closing it. Okay, all that's great. It's going to take you 30 seconds, a minute. Whereas here, you just press the button, 1 second or less, and you're recording. And it's got multiple microphones on it. And the battery lasts forever. And if your phone's in your bag or your jacket and you're skiing, but you want to leave it on like a lunatic all day, Alex, I just leave it on when I'm skiing. And I just talk to myself when I'm skiing alone. You know, if I ever go down in a tree well or whatever, it will be my last will and testament.
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Alex5:18
Didn't we just talk about you not skiing alone anymore like 10 days ago? It wasn't that far back, man. But anyway, we have a promo code, people can get a good deal, I think, on a Plaud, yeah?
Yes, we do. If you go to plaud.ai, plaud.ai/twist, use the code twist, save 10%. Jason, I'm using mine to take ideas for blog posts when I'm out and about. Love it. And because I have the wristband, my children can't yank it off my body. So, not really a clip-on guy yet, but give me like 5 years of having children and then I'll be able to safely wear it like that. But yeah, I'm loving it, Lon's loving it, you're loving it. Kind of a hit here at Twist HQ.
