E83: Market slide continues, and how to address Uvalde

Palmer Luckey’s confrontation with Jason Calacanis at the All-In Summit was not staged. Luckey publicly accused Calacanis of helping derail his career and attacking his family; Calacanis then walked onstage, shook his hand, argued with him, and ultimately hugged him.

The Summit deliberately filtered for builders rather than people seeking customers or access. About 300 attendees could offer $500, $1,000 or $2,500 instead of the $7,500 ticket; Calacanis said brokers, money managers, salespeople and business-development executives were deprioritized, while builders and artists received preference.

The venture market had repriced with extraordinary speed: founders were already accepting terms they had rejected weeks earlier. Calacanis said some fundraising expectations had fallen 50%, while founders who resisted board seats and information rights were suddenly volunteering CFO access because they needed capital.

High-quality operating results were no longer enough to protect technology valuations because future earnings had become the real uncertainty. Snowflake was 67% below its November peak despite 85% revenue growth and 174% net retention; the panel argued another leg down would come if slowing spending forced widespread earnings revisions.

Chamath Palihapitiya described a private-market choice between admitting large losses and financing companies in ways that delay those markdowns. He said growth funds could mark portfolios down 50–60%, or use instruments such as unpriced converts that might let auditors preserve much higher carrying values while waiting for markets to recover.

The technology compensation reset was colliding with lifestyles built around boom-era stock gains. Brad Gerstner described a company paying engineers roughly $1 million in cash plus stock historically worth another $1 million annually; after the stock fell, management refused to replenish the lost equity value despite employee pressure.

The panel’s central startup advice was to sacrifice growth early rather than discover too late that the company cannot finance itself. Sequoia’s example showed a company halving burn and doubling runway immediately; Sacks argued excessive cuts can be reversed with rehiring, while insufficient cuts can leave a company unable to survive.

On mass shootings, the speakers converged most clearly on earlier identification and targeted intervention rather than one broad gun-control measure. They focused on red-flag systems, school reporting and social-media warning signals, noting that the Buffalo shooter had received psychiatric evaluation in New York yet was never entered into the state’s red-flag process.