Keith left Founders Fund to work at Khosla Ventures because he hated commuting to Sand Hill Road every day and believed the future of investing was in San Francisco. He also preferred Khosla's early-stage investment strategy over Founders Fund's focus on momentum investing.
The Trump administration is assembling a diverse group of business people because they aim to bring economic success and practical expertise to foreign policy and other areas. The administration believes that successful business people can better manage the complex U.S. economy and drive positive outcomes.
Google's Willow chip is a significant breakthrough because it performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, a task that would take today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. The chip uses qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and has shown improved error correction, paving the way for practical quantum computing applications.
Apple is developing its own AI server chips to maintain control over the user experience and ensure data privacy. They want to keep AI processing on local devices rather than in the cloud, which aligns with their privacy-focused strategy.
TikTok is considered a threat to U.S. national security because it collects and potentially exposes American user data to the Chinese government. There is evidence of data monitoring from China and the app's CEO lying under oath about data storage and access.
Stripe remains private because the founders are waiting to see if crypto stable coins could disrupt their business. They are also building alternatives to the advantages that going public would bring, such as M&A opportunities and liquidity, which keeps them from rushing into an IPO.
Keith believes that tariffs can be implemented without causing inflation because the Treasury Secretary and the National Economic Council understand economic substitution. Tariffs can act as a reverse subsidy, encouraging American companies to compete and driving down costs, while also managing potential price increases through strategic adjustments.
The Trump administration is imposing tariffs on Chinese goods to reduce China's economic advantage and promote supply chain diversity. This includes combating China's environmental regulations and subsidies, which allow them to produce goods more cheaply and dominate markets.
Keith is skeptical about the primary utility of crypto because he believes the main use case currently is speculation. While speculation is natural, he hopes that real applications and utility layers will be built on top of the existing crypto network to create lasting value.
Quantum computing is focused on encryption standards because it can potentially break modern encryption algorithms like RSA and SHA-256 using Shor's algorithm. This could compromise the security of many digital systems, including financial transactions and private communications, necessitating the development and adoption of post-quantum encryption standards.
(0:00) The Besties welcome Keith Rabois!
(4:01) Keith explains why he returned to Khosla Ventures, the differences between Founders Fund and Khosla, and his husband Jacob Helberg's role in Trump Admin
(13:09) Business acumen of Trump's cabinet and appointees, diversity of opinion
(25:59) Google's new quantum chip: potential impact on encryption, cryptography, and more
(43:50) Apple developing new server chip for AI inference, iOS flop, why its product culture is failing
(54:30) TikTok panics after appeals court upholds the "divest-or-ban" law, with a January 19th deadline
(1:03:55) State of Venture Capital, why Stripe is still private, thoughts on crypto
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Intro Music Credit:
Intro Video Credit:
Referenced in the show:
https://www.tiktok.com/@frankielapenna/video/7010077215576575238)
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/06/trump-billionaires-cabinet-elon-musk)
https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08449-y)
https://research.google/blog/suppressing-quantum-errors-by-scaling-a-surface-code-logical-qubit)
https://quantumai.google/roadmap)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmut_Neven)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment)
https://www.discovery.com/science/Double-Slit-Experiment)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-is-working-on-ai-chip-with-broadcom?rc=pxkrxo)
https://x.com/rabois/status/870673635375104000)
https://www.amazon.com/Company-Giants-Conversations-Visionaries-Digital/dp/0070329656)
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/09/tech/bytedance-tiktok-halt-us-ban-intl/index.html)
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-us-ban-sale-china-congress-de12b4d22aa8095e62cb0982a6e62235)
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-congress-bill-1c48466df82f3684bd6eb21e61ebcb8d)
https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/q3-2024-pitchbook-nvca-venture-monitor)
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/12/servicetitan-starts-trading-on-nasdaq-after-ipo.html)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/business/dealbook/ftc-trump-ferguson-khan.html)
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/6/15/antitrust)