-
Unknown A
What was your red pill moment? Was there one specific thing, or was it more of a trickle of things?
-
Unknown B
It was both. Right. It's like it starts. The wall starts crumbling, and then it comes down all at once. So for me, it really started early in 23. I started reading Pirate Wires and Mike Solana, and I thought he was a little crazy at first because he would write these articles. One he wrote was about how the Ukrainian soldiers had swastikas on their helmets, and the New York Times photographers would ask them to take the swastikas off for photos. And I said, that can't be right. That can't be true. And then four months later, it was in the New York Times, buried in the middle of the paper. And I kept seeing stories like that, that he would be early on. And so I just started feeling uncomfortable and queasy about what was going on with mainstream media. And then in May of Last year of 24, I read some article that talked about Trump's speech in Charlottesville.
-
Unknown B
And this has been well covered, but where he said there was good people on both sides. And the article said it was completely propaganda and not accurately reflecting what he said, that he denounced the Nazis a bunch of times in his speech. And so then I went and watched that video, and that was my red pill moment. I think it was for a lot of people, because it wasn't just the media spinning it or politicians spinning it. That was like one of the pillars of why you were supposed to hate Trump was that speech. And then you see Biden say that's why he had to run a second time. And you see Obama go to even see Biden bring it up again in the beginning of the dnc, and it's one of their pillars, and they clearly know that they're misrepresenting things. So for me, that was just.
-
Unknown B
That was beyond uncomfortable. I was just like, okay, now I got to go back to first principles and look at the primary data and listen only to original speeches by people. And I just realized I couldn't trust mainstream media. So I became. I started questioning the Democrats. As soon as I started questioning the Democrats, I started getting a lot of shame and anger and hatred. Oh, the other thing that happened that was part of this journey is that my chief of staff parted ways with me after nine years in April of last year. And he was the main person protecting me from myself on Twitter. And he was the one who would say, stay in your lane. Nobody wants to hear what you think about politics or San Francisco or anything other than your area of products and investing. And with him gone, I just started tweeting whatever I felt and thought, and sometimes I got it wrong, or it was a little too emotional.
-
Unknown B
But first of all, it was really fun. And then second of all, I found I got connected to this whole new audience of people who are these kind of techno optimists. I think you guys probably talked about it. And that just brought me down this path that eventually I came out two days before the election publicly for Trump, and it was only because that's when I completely got there, and I was trying to just be completely honest and authentic with myself and on Twitter at the same time. And my daughters turned to me that Sunday, and they said, you're gonna vote for Trump. We know it. And I said, yeah, you're probably right. And they said, well, then you have to go say it on Twitter. And my daughters were like, really? In this with me. Yeah. So anyway. And then it was on the front page of the New York Post on the day of the election that I was this.
-
Unknown B
Not that I'm such news, but maybe it just was their news peg that I was coming out for Trump. And. But I'll get back to your Reid question. But what I love about my New York Times, about my New York friends, is that they did not give a. They were all pro Kamala. And they texted me, and they're just like, oh, that's kind of funny. But it's one thing I kind of love about New York. They didn't care. Back to your question on Reid. What I love about Reid was he was already getting pings from people saying, what's going on with Pincus? He's going off the rails. He's becoming a Trumper. You know, it's. You guys, I'm sure, have gone down the street a little bit of that.
-
Unknown C
Too, about Shamas in Fredberg.
-
Unknown B
Yeah, me. So you're like, what's wrong with him? We got to bring him back into the fold. You know, he's. He's. Should we lock him up? Is he crazy? And so Reid was already getting these. I had a lot of anxiety about talking to Reid about it, and finally, Reid and I got on FaceTime, and he just said, I just want to start by saying, I. I'm team Mark. And I said, I'm team Reid. And it could sound a little, you know. Aw.
-
Unknown C
But Americans can get along even if they disagree politically about a candidate's probably where we need to get to, especially, you know, now that Trump's gonna be in office in A couple of days. What was it like when you had lunch with Biden? Yeah.
-
Unknown B
Okay, well, just to finish the Reid part. Sorry, but.
-
Unknown C
No problem.
-
Unknown B
What I love about Reid is that we followed that with a four hour dinner. And he said, I never questioned your principles. He said, I know you're a highly principled person and I just want to understand which principles it is and I'd like to convince you to change your mind.
-
Unknown A
But anyway, so hold on one second. So you said something almost in passing, but I just want to double click. I think part of what Silicon Valley actually gets wrong is that we don't embrace the tism. And what I mean by that is everybody, we're all a little socially uncomfortable, we're awkward. I wouldn't say that we were the coolest people growing up. And there's this virulent form of blockers. You called it chief of staff. I think that these folks can be very detrimental, which almost represent this filter between your true self and everybody else. And there is this game that's played about being a gatekeeper. I do think that executive assistants are valuable. Administrative assistants are valuable. The reason I can say this is that my EA went on maternity leave. I had and I experimented with the chief of staff, et cetera. And now I use Jason Service called Athena.
-
Unknown A
And I have a guy that works with me in the Philippines and it's about $3,000 a month. And I can honestly tell you this guy is the single most effective administrative support I've ever had. And what there isn't is all these opinions on what I can say or do. And I think that when you look at a lot of these big companies, if you look at Zuck's current transformation or what you just spoke about, they. There are all these interlopers that seem to get in the middle of you and people's perception of you. I don't know if you have any comments or reactions to that idea.
-
Unknown B
Yeah, it's part of where I know you guys have talked about Zuck coming out as Lisa's based, or his seemingly more authentic self, or sharing more about himself. And I can relate to it because I think we all go through this, this struggle as you start to be more of a known person inside your company, outside your company, and you have people around you taking the edges off. And I think that we're now in this time, I think we're having. Authenticity is having a moment now, which is great for me because Reid said to me, I, I've. If you Google me, you'll see that there's lots and lots of bad things written about me. And a lot of it is my high school quote was, some people have tact and others tell the truth. And I've always been kind of just committed to being honest, even if it's nuanced and it's not an easy soundbite.
-
Unknown B
And Reid said to me early on, you need to pick what the easy narrative is or the press is going to make it up for you. And he was right. And they did, or my competitors did. So I think that now with long form podcasts and there's just more and the fact that we can kind of directly, in a lot of ways, Elon was the first one to directly defend himself. You remember when.
-
Unknown A
Well, he fired his whole. Do you remember when he fired his whole PR team? He fired all those people. There's just like, there's none of that infrastructure between him and, and everybody else.
-
Unknown B
But do you remember when he would be on Twitter all the time, post PayPal, trying to correct the story and just write long, long diatribes? And then when a New York Times reporter said something negative out of Tesla, he just went off for weeks about them and it seemed a little crazy and deranged. And then you started to see that it worked. Like he actually. And we were told, don't defend yourself. If something bad is written about you, you're going to prolong the press cycle. You're going to make the journalists angry. And so we're now unshackled. I teach this class at Stanford and I taught two back to back on Monday. And I looked around and I saw half the placards said, she, her, he, him, his. And I got a little pang of like, oh, do I have to watch what I'm saying? Like, no, I don't.
-
Unknown B
I'm unshackled. I'm just going to. This is just me and I'm going to be Mark Unfiltered. And it's the better version of ourselves. So anyway, I'm glad that Zuck feels like he can be. He can present more of his complete self out there now. And I think we can get into it later. But I have a lot of thoughts on how the culture is going to kind of move more towards Bass.