Lex Fridman Podcast
#338 – Chamath Palihapitiya: Money, Success, Startups, Energy, Poker & Happiness
15 Nov 2022
Chamath Palihapitiya is a venture capitalist, engineer, CEO of Social Capital, and co-host of the All-In Podcast. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Bambee: https://bambee.com and use code LEX to get free HR audit - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex - Indeed: https://indeed.com/lex to get $75 credit EPISODE LINKS: Chamath's Twitter: https://twitter.com/chamath Chamath's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chamath Chamath's Substack: https://chamathreads.substack.com Social Capital (website): https://socialcapital.com All-In Podcast (podcast): https://youtube.com/channel/UCESLZhusAkFfsNsApnjF_Cg PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:55) - Childhood and forgiveness (21:39) - Money and happiness (28:29) - Poker (31:57) - Mistakes (42:47) - Early jobs (44:25) - Facebook (1:02:11) - Energy (1:09:51) - Cloud computation (1:14:06) - Fixing social media (1:23:58) - Trump's Twitter ban (1:29:03) - Kanye West (1:40:15) - All-In Podcast (1:49:31) - Nuclear war (2:01:07) - Startups (2:09:38) - Work-life balance (2:20:47) - Teamwork (2:32:08) - Energy transition (2:42:41) - Silicon Valley culture (2:46:00) - Activism culture (2:50:21) - Advice for young people (2:56:56) - Meaning of life
Chapter 1: What is the background of Chamath Palihapitiya?
The following is a conversation with Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist and engineer, founder and CEO of Social Capital, previously an early senior executive at Facebook, and is the co-host of the All In podcast, a podcast that I highly recommend for the wisdom and the camaraderie of the four co-hosts, also known as besties. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Bambi for HR services, InsideTracker for biomonitoring, NetSuite for business management software, SimpliSafe for home security, and Indeed for hiring. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle.
I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by a new sponsor called Bambi, an outsourced and automated human resources, HR solution for businesses. I think in the video on their website, it says that many businesses would need to hire an HR person, and that's like 70K a year plus.
So what they're offering is super cost effective because it's just 99 bucks per month. And they take care of the HR compliance and all the complexities involved with that. It's important to hire people that can take care of human resources. HR is one of those things that when done poorly, it can really hurt. And when done well, it just makes everything work beautifully.
And so you should use the best tools for the job. And a really cost-effective one is Bambi. You can schedule your free conversation today. Go to Bambi.com and type Lex on the podcast when you sign up. It's spelled B-A-M-B-E-E. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data.
It's kind of interesting to think of the human body as just the source of signals. You got a hierarchy of living organisms, millions of them, billions of them, depending how you define the atomic organisms that make up the human body. And so all of them are sending signals, tiny signals, big signals, and all of those that conglomerate that orchestra
sends just a huge amount of data which is used by the brain and the nervous system and the immune system and all the different systems that make up the anatomy and the physiology of the body to sort of coordinate everything. And for us to plug in and collect some of that data in order to make lifestyle and health recommendations, I think that's the future.
Recommendation should be done based primarily on your body, grounded, of course, in the wisdom that science provides for the population. Insight Tracker is a step into that direction. It's a preview of the future. Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insidetracker.com slash lex. That's insidetracker.com slash lex.
This show is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. They manage financials, inventory, e-commerce, all the different business-related details. The ad reads today, and it's funny because it's on the Chamath episode, and Chamath is one of the greatest business leaders and minds and...
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Chapter 2: How does childhood trauma shape personal development?
All those are obviously exceptionally important. but it's also running and taking care of all the glue that ties everything together. So that means human resources, but that also means managing the inventory, the e-commerce, managing all the financial stuff, automating everything that you can automate, making it easy, efficient, using the best tools for the job. That's where NetSuite fits in.
Go to netsuite.com slash lex to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. This show is also brought to you by SimpliSafe, a home security company designed to be simple and effective. It took me no time. I don't remember how long it was. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe less. I don't remember. But they say it takes you 30 minutes to set up. You can customize the system for your needs.
I have it set up in my place. I love it. It's the first layer of physical security to my place.
I have many layers of physical and cyber, digital, emotional, psychological security, although probably the biggest vulnerabilities to me is psychological security because I really try to wear my heart on my sleeve and really take the world in, the opinion of the world, the pain of the world, the struggle of the world.
and not in the way where I want the approval of the world, I really don't, but I want to empathize with the experience of others and understand it. And when you do that, what you find is your mind can be hacked. This complicated psychological landscape to operate in is so tricky. But of course, that's way more complicated than physical security. Physical security should be taken care of.
That's the smart thing to do. You should use a simple system for that, an effective system, easy to set up, easy to use. That's what SimpliSafe is. Go to simplisafe.com and get 50% off any new system. This show is also brought to you by Indeed, a hiring website. Like I told you, Chamath episode, we're talking all about business. I don't know.
Maybe it's just to me, but I think the most important thing for successful business is building a great team. That's also the most important thing for your own personal happiness and growth and psychological flourishing.
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Chapter 3: What role does forgiveness play in personal growth?
Anyway, The process of hiring, the early stage of selecting a great pool of candidates quickly, then from those candidates, selecting it down to a good fit, good resume, good skill, good personality, diversity, all those elements that make up a great team. There's the stepwise process that's really painful, that's really difficult to turn into a science.
I really do think it's part art, part science, just that conversation. And whatever can be made easier, more efficient, more organized, you should do. Indeed does that. It's a great tool. They have an instant match tool that does that first step of finding the set of candidates that fit the job description. They do that immediately.
Anyway, they have a special offer only available for a limited time. Check out at indeed.com slash lex. Terms and conditions apply. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Chamath Balahapatiya. You grew up in a dysfunctional household on welfare. You've talked about this before.
What were, for you personally, psychologically, some difficult moments in your childhood?
I'll answer that question in a slightly different way, which is that I think when you grow up in a household that's defined by physical abuse and psychological abuse, you're hypervigilant all the time. And so it's actually easier for me to point to moments where I was happy or I felt compassion or I felt safe. Otherwise, every moment, I'll give you a couple of examples.
I was thinking about this a while ago. There was a tree outside of my apartment where we lived when I was growing up. And my father sometimes would make me go outside to take the tree branch that he would hit me with. And so you can imagine if you're a 10, 11 year old kid and you have to deal with that, what do you do?
Well, a hypervigilant child learns how to basically estimate the strength of these branches. right? How far can he go before it breaks? You have to estimate his anger and estimate the effective strength of branches and bring back something because I remember these moments where if it was, he would look at it and then he would make me go out again and get it, right? Get a different one.
Or there was a certain belt that he wore that had this kind of belt buckle that stuck out And you just wanted to make sure if that was the thing that you were gonna get hit by, that it wasn't the buckle facing out because that really hurt. And so you became hyper aware of which part of the buckle was facing out versus facing in in those moments.
And there are like hundreds of these little examples, which essentially I would say the through line is that you're just so on edge, right? And you walk into this house and you're just basically trying to get to the point where you leave the house.
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Chapter 4: How does the experience of poverty influence success?
And so in that microcosm of growing up, any moment that's not like that is seared in my memory in a way that I just can't describe to a person. I'll give you an example. I volunteered when I was in grade five or six, I can't remember which it was, in the kindergarten of my school. And I would just go and the teacher would ask you to clean things up.
And at the end of that grade five year, she took me and two other kids to Dairy Queen. And I'd never gone to a restaurant, literally, because we didn't have the money. And I remember the first time I tasted this Dairy Queen meal, it was like a hamburger, fries, a Coke and a Blizzard. And I was like, what is this?
And I felt so special because you're getting something that most people would take for granted. Oh, it's a Sunday or I'm really busy, let me go take my kid to fast food. I think that until I left high school,
I think, and this is not just specific to me, but a lot of other people, it's you're in this hypervigilant loop punctuated with these incredibly visceral moments of compassion by other people. You know, a different example, we had such a strict budget and we didn't have a car. And so, you know, I was responsible with my mom to always go shopping.
And so I learned very early on how to look for coupons, how to buy things that were on sale or special. And we had a very basic diet because you have to budget this thing really precisely. But the end of every year where I lived, there was a large grocery chain called Loblaws. And Loblaws would discount a cheesecake from $7.99 to $4.99. And my parents would buy that once a year.
And we probably did that six or seven times. And you can't imagine how special we felt, myself, my two sisters. We would sit there. We would watch the New Year's Eve celebration on TV. We would cut this cheesecake into five pieces. It felt like everything. So that's sort of how my existence when I was at that age is, for better or for worse, that's how I remember it.
The hyper-vigilance loop, is that still with you today? What are the echoes of that that's still with you today, the good and the bad?
If you put yourself in the mind of a young child, the thing that that does to you is at a very core basic level, it says you're worthless. Because if you can step outside of that and you think about any child in the world, they don't deserve to go through that. And at some point, by the way, I should tell you, I don't blame my parents anymore.
It was a process to get there, but I feel like they did the best they could. And they suffered their own issues and enormous pressures and stresses. And so, you know, I've really, for the most part, forgiven them.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Chamath share about the importance of friendship?
I mean, I have Nat every day. You know, Rob, I don't talk to that often. But to have two people, I had zero. I think most people, unfortunately, have zero. So I think what he needs is somebody to just listen. You don't have to put a label on these things. And you just have to try to guide in these very unique moments where you can just de-escalate
what is going on in your mind, and I suspect what's going on in his mind, again, to play armchair quarterback, I don't know, is that he is in a moment where he just feels lower than low. And we all do it. We've all had these moments where we don't know how to get attention. And if you didn't grow up in a healthy environment, you may go through a negative way to get attention.
And it's not to excuse it, but it's to understand it.
That's so profound, the feeling less than and at those low points going externally to find it and maybe creating conflict and scandal to get that attention.
The way that my doctor explained it to me is... You have to think about your self-worth like a knot.
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Chapter 6: How does Chamath describe the psychological dynamics of his friends?
It's inside of a very complicated set of knots. So it's like some people don't have these knots. It's just presented to you on a platter. But for some of us, because of the way we grow up, it's covered in all these knots. So the whole goal is to loosen those knots. And it happens slowly. It happens unpredictably. And it takes a long time.
And so while you're doing that, you are going to have moments where when you feel less than, you're not prepared to look inside and say, actually, here's how I feel about myself. It's pretty cool. I'm happy with where I'm at.
I have to ask on the topic of friendship. You do an amazing podcast called All In Podcast. People should stop listening to this and go listen to that. You just did your 100th episode.
Chapter 7: What does Chamath believe is essential for successful startups?
I mean, it's one of my favorite podcasts. It's incredible. For the... the technical and the human psychological wisdom that you guys constantly give in the way you analyze the world, but also just the chemistry between you. You're clearly, there's a tension and there's a camaraderie that's all laid out on the table. So I don't know the two Davids that well, but I have met Jason.
What do you love about him?
I mean, I'll give you a little psychological breakdown of all three of these guys. Sure. Just my opinion. Yeah. And I love you guys.
Would they agree with your psychological breakdown?
I don't know. I think that what I would say about J. Cal is he is unbelievably loyal to no end.
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Chapter 8: How does Chamath define personal success and happiness?
And he's like any of those movies... where, which are about like the mafia or whatever, where like, you know, something bad's going wrong and you need somebody to show up, that's Jekyll.
So if you killed the said proverbial homeless person, he would be right there to help you.
But he's the one that he'll defend you in every way, shape, or form, even if it's not, doesn't make sense in that moment. He doesn't see... That as an action of whether it'll solve the problem, he sees that as an act of devotion to you, your friend. And that's an incredible gift that he gives us.
The other side of it is that J. Cal needs to learn how to trust that other people love him back as much as he loves us. And that's where he makes mistakes because he assumes that he's not as lovable as the rest of us. But he's infinitely more lovable than he understands. I mean, you have to see Lex. He is unbelievably funny. I mean, I cannot tell you how funny this guy is. Next level funny.
Yeah, his timing. Timing. Everything. Charm. The care he takes. So he is as lovable, but he doesn't believe himself to be. And that manifests itself in areas that drive us all crazy from time to time.
Which makes it for a very pleasant listening experience. Okay, so what about the two Davids, David Sachs and David Friedberg?
David Sachs is the one that I would say I have the most emotional connection with. He and I can go a year without talking and then we'll talk for four hours straight and then we know where we are and we have this ability to pick up and have a level of intimacy with each other. And I think that's just because I've known David for so long now. that I find really comforting.
And then Freeberg is this person who I think similar to me had a very turbulent upbringing, has fought through it to build an incredible life for himself. And I have this enormous respect for his journey. I don't particularly care about his outcomes, to be honest, but I just have, I look at that guy and I think, he did it. And so if I didn't do it,
I would be glad that he did it, if it makes any sense. And you can see that he feels like his entire responsibility is really around his kids and to kind of like give a better counterfactual. And you know, sometimes I think he gets that right and wrong, but he's a very special human being that way.
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