E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

Friedberg’s sharpest insider warning was that the 2021 venture-capital vintage could “torpedo” as many as half of today’s Silicon Valley firms. He said institutional LPs expect severe underperformance from peak-deployment funds and may permanently reduce venture allocations as a result.

Microsoft’s 2023 advantage was not merely AI exposure but Satya Nadella’s ability to preserve optionality during OpenAI’s leadership crisis. The panel paired Microsoft’s roughly $1 trillion market-cap gain and Activision close with its rapid move to absorb Sam Altman and potentially his team while protecting its OpenAI position.

Uber completed a turnaround that looked implausible five years earlier: profitability, S&P 500 admission, planned buybacks, and major regulatory normalization. Calacanis noted London taxis had joined the app after years of conflict, while Friedberg cited a market-cap rise from roughly $50 billion to $126 billion.

Bill Ackman’s Treasury trade was one of the episode’s cleanest demonstrations of timing. Sacks said Ackman shorted bonds for most of 2023, covered and turned long on October 23, the day the 10-year Treasury yield peaked before yields subsequently fell sharply.

Susquehanna’s roughly 15% stake in ByteDance was highlighted as one of venture investing’s extraordinary surviving positions. The early investor remained heavily exposed to TikTok’s parent despite years of political scrutiny, with outside reporting likewise placing SIG’s holding at about 15%. (Forbes)

The science breakthrough with the clearest real-world consequence was the first FDA-approved CRISPR-based treatment for sickle-cell disease. Chamath emphasized that gene editing had crossed from research into an approved therapy for a painful inherited blood disorder, a milestone the FDA formally approved on December 8, 2023. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

Friedberg argued that local, open-source LLMs mattered more strategically than another cloud AI feature. He stressed that offline models reduce dependence on centralized providers, while AI coding tools were already letting single developers produce work that he said previously required teams of six to twelve people.

Citadel’s economics stood out even against a strong market year. Chamath said Ken Griffin’s firm returned $7 billion to investors in 2023, more than $20 billion since 2020, while generating roughly 15% returns that he characterized as steady and largely uncorrelated with the broader market.