E45: Theranos & VC fraud risks, China bans video games, Texas SB8, Apple app store, CA fires, Rogan

Fast money was already eroding startup diligence, with some firms described as writing checks daily while doing virtually none. The podcast’s syndicate lead said diligence time had tripled and 20–30% of initially attractive deals were being abandoned after closer examination of how revenue was presented.

The clearest fraud boundary they drew was between optimistic forecasts and false claims about historical facts or current capabilities. Sacks also argued that Theranos had no conventional VC on its board and apparently no major Silicon Valley VC investor, complicating its portrayal as a standard venture-capital failure.

Chamath said OTT Risk, the insurance startup he co-founded, was negotiating multi-hundred-million-dollar corporate policies while finding some emerging risks extraordinarily difficult to price. Friedberg explained the problem: traditional insurance depends on historical frequencies, while repeated hot and dry years had made past fire data a poor guide.

Texas’s 2021 SB8 was notable less for its six-week abortion limit than for outsourcing enforcement to private plaintiffs. It let strangers sue providers or people who aided an abortion for at least $10,000 plus fees, a structure designed to complicate conventional pre-enforcement challenges. (Legal Information Institute)

Apple’s reader-app concession was treated as the first crack in the App Store’s 30% toll rather than a minor billing change. Netflix and Spotify could direct users to outside signup pages, and the hosts expected pressure eventually to spread toward games, alternative app stores, and sideloading.

Sacks launched Callin as a live-audio and podcast hybrid whose transcript doubles as an editing interface. The hosts described roughly 10,000 early signups, 4,400 All-In After Party subscribers after one day, and an arrangement for the All-In syndicate to lead Callin’s Series B.