E139: Recapping Chamath's wedding, VC surplus, unions vs Hollywood, room-temp superconductors & more

The hosts’ strongest career advice was to build companies before trying to advise them as a venture capitalist. Calacanis said most young people would learn more by founding or operating a company, while Sacks said his firm requires investment-team hires to have operating experience and ideally founder experience.

Chamath said his own venture returns illustrate how brutally liquidity can change performance. He said his gross IRR had been about 31–32% before falling as distributions dried up, forcing earlier sales; the group also noted top public-tech stocks had compounded above 25% during the prior era.

The discussion separated venture capital into two viable models: elite selection and deep operating support. Friedberg contrasted Founders Fund’s pick-the-best-and-get-out-of-the-way approach with firms such as First Round and Andreessen Horowitz, which built large support systems around recruiting, operations, and founder assistance.

The most concrete Hollywood point was that ownership, not salary, creates the extraordinary payouts. Calacanis said Jon Favreau told him he received no Disney equity for The Mandalorian and Disney+, while Todd Phillips reportedly waived his Joker fee for equity after the studio doubted the film, which ultimately grossed about $1 billion.

The hosts argued Hollywood’s real competitive threat is the migration of attention to creators, with AI potentially making production far cheaper and more abundant. Friedberg envisioned vastly more films at dramatically lower cost, while the group pointed to TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, and MrBeast as already taking hours from traditional television.

Chamath argued labor should bargain for long-term equity upside, not only higher current compensation. He said that belief was one reason he sold his Warriors stake, and used NBA stars such as Michael Jordan and LeBron James to argue that workers can create enormous franchise value without directly owning much of it.

The room-temperature-superconductor claim was presented as potentially historic but nowhere near established. Friedberg said a South Korean team reported superconducting behavior at ambient pressure in copper-modified lead apatite, while condensed-matter physicists who contacted him were skeptical and replication was still required.

Chamath disclosed that a materials startup he backed was using machine learning to search for better low-cost LFP battery chemistries. He said the team had recently raised money, was finding unexpected dopants computationally, and expected to announce a significant battery breakthrough within weeks.