YouSaid · the spoken record

Keith Rabois

lines on the record: 143
first: 2019-01-05
most recent: 2019-01-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“They're all very similar. We funded a company that's doing 3D construction of homes called Mighty, Mighty Building out of Y Combinator. You're going to see a lot of innovation on the construction side over the next decade.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's totally antiquated. Like walls, think about building a wall. Right now, each one's custom made. There's no reason it can't be productized. We funded a company called Vert that's going to do that.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We funded 10 different companies at Kosla in the last two years that are real estate innovation. And so a huge fraction of the American economy.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to resell the houses, which is very complicated. We have a thousand employees now. But we're in 18 cities, and we'll be in 30 cities by the end of the year.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Obador is doing phenomenally well So, boom. So, Open Door allows you to sell your house 30 seconds online. So you put in your address, we give you an offer of what the house is worth, and you get instant liquidity for your house. So instead of spending 84 days selling your house, having strangers come through your house every day, waiting to see if you get a bid, we make everything easy, simple, and immediate. And it's done phenomenally well. We're in 18 cities.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Celebrity, yeah, present. Absolutely. All right. We have to finish up. We didn't get to talk about Open Door, but very briefly, where is it headed? Open Door, which is your real estate company. Yeah. Open Door is doing phenomenally well.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, God, I feel bad for you. Oh, no I used to listen to you on the New York. He used to be on the New York talk shows when I was growing up. And one of the things I'd do in high school and junior high school is we listen to talk shows on the radio. It was kind of a common way to hit ourselves, sports radio and other talk show. And he'd call in all the time. So he was a very significant New York celebrity presence. Absolutely.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nope, you're 100% right. You know, I said the same thing when I was watching him. And I believe I'm the only person who watched the entire seasons of the apprentice, of people we know. Oh, God, I feel bad for you. Oh, no, I loved it. I'm just saying if, you know, nice to listen to you on the New York TVs new. He used to be on the”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's definitely got a way of appealing to people and framing things that make people nod their head. And if you have that, you go far in politics, but that's a skill that most CEOs don't have.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oprah could, I mean, I don't know. I'm more nervous. I mean, Howard Schultz and people like that are probably going to run. But I think those people who've never been tested tend to backfire a lot. It's very difficult when you're not used to this level of scrutiny and stress. Like Meg Whitman, for example, was a horrific political candidate, all of her races, all the things she's done in politics have backfired. It's just a different skill. And Trump, you could tell had some skill in marketing from the day he announced his candidacy when he came down the escalator. I remember sitting at home. It was a Sunday morning and I was watching it with this guy I was dating at the time. And he looked at me and he said, you know, this guy's going to do well. And I was like, what are you talking about? It's like, Trump, I grew up in New York City and Trump, you know, the 80s. And he said, you have to watch this speech. So I watched it. And I was like, you're right.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And for Silicon Valley, who's the best? The one who would give him the most trouble is Michelle Obama. I don't think she wants to run, but she would cause him real problems. Most of the other candidates won't. See, there's a couple things that are implicit in Trump that don't get enough attention. One is he received a reasonable fraction of the African-American votes for a Republican. And the Democrats cannot win the presidency if he gets double digit African-American votes. And that's the basic swing between Obama and Hillary summed up. There's a lot of complexity. You can talk about anything you want. But fundamentally, it was that he got more African-American voters than cheated. Obama got more than cheated. And so someone who naturally appeals to the African American community will do very well and cause him problems. Secondly, someone who doesn't need the media attention but will get it, like meaning like someone who's above a certain status.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't believe in VR personally. I don't think that's a thing other than maybe gaming. AR possibly, but there'll be some new channel and some political candidate will pioneer how to use it. There's a great book. I mean, I'm sure you've read Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death from 1984. I think it perfectly predicted the Trump administration. But the main point of the book and the main arc of the book is that... Every medium of communication creates a different type of content that succeeds in that medium of communication. And Twitter is ideally suited for someone like Trump. So there'll be a new platform at some point and there'll be a different candidate that takes advantage of it.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I agree with that. So people, you know, we have these waves and we alluded to the famous Nixon Kennedy debate where many historians think the election, which was the first presidential debate televised. Every new technology platform will empower a different type of person. Franklin Roosevelt famously used the radio. Trump is the first Twitter president. There will be a new platform at some point, a different way of sharing information and debating things. And the person who runs for president and uses that platform natively will probably do very well.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the place of victory Accomplishing At the same time, it was interesting when I was talking, someone was talking about today about my piece on Twitter, how he uses Twitter as a government style. They were like, well, in the next president, I'll use it. I'm like, can anyone use it as well? That's a question of someone can actually employ it. He employs it really well. Not well. I don't think it's well, but it's kind of sociopathic. But it works for him.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, he commits the way I describe Trump is he commits the most unforced errors of anybody I've ever seen. He finds a way to put defeat in the place of victory. Like he attacks his own supporters. Democrats in somewhat liberals are very lucky because you could get someone with Trump's views, but without his personal character flaws. And that person, if he or she were elected president, would be phenomenally successful. Trump gets in his own way and probably is accomplishing one-third of what he probably could have accomplished.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So abstractly, you can say, Oh, I can beat Trump. But when there's a very tangible, concrete person who has their own character flaws, that's going to be very interesting. It'll be interesting.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he holds on, and barring a health issue, which he's 72 years old and under stress all the time and doesn't have all the healthiest habits, I suspect that he runs for re-election. And if he runs for re-election, I think the odds of him winning are actually more than 50%. And the reason why is obviously his favorable unfavorable rating is poor. It's one of the worst in American history. But most of the Democrats who are going to challenge him are very flawed themselves. It's an organization.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of a sudden, that company can't recruit talented engineers, designers, et cetera. And the company itself is in jeopardy because of that. And I think he has now burned through so much of his administration. These are people he hired, by the way. You know, one of the points that's hard to be forgiving to him and people should really be attacking him on is all these people he fired for ledged flaws, he hired them all. So someone made the mistake on the way in. If he inherit someone as a CEO, it's perfectly fine to fire them when you realize they're not capable of doing the job. But if you're the one who hired them too, you can't be hiring and firing people all day long. Right. It shows you don't know how to hire.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is a great question. I think he's run into a box where the people who are most talented really don't want to work for him. And that's a fatal problem in a company that we deal with this on a board all the time. We have a CEO who has some talent but is destructive.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually his The top of his fucking head. Yeah, but these instincts sometimes are right. Like the foreign policy establishment, for example, can be wrong about a lot of things in the U.S. And his willingness to challenge them and not just take for granted what they say. So, for example, one of the things I applaud him a lot on is moving our embassy in Israel. Very controversial. Everybody was running for president for like 40 years declared that they would do it in every single, whether they were Republican or Democrat, wimped out. So it was in the Democratic platform to move the embassy to Jerusalem. It was in the Republican platform since 1980 to move the, but every time someone became president, they found every excuse under the book to not move it. He actually promised it and he actually did it. And it turns out he was right that there weren't riots. It actually was supporting our ally who is democratic. People in Israel, by the way, I was in Tel Aviv in August really love Trump. Even the liberal part of the sort of Israeli population loves Trump because they finally found an American president who actually did what he said.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was a little bit like roll the dice. Anything could be better. And, you know, to some extent, that's what Trump's actually done. On some policies, for example, I believe his policy on China is actually probably more right than wrong. And I think actually just about a 50-50 perspective on this in Silicon Valley at the moment, there's a lot of people who are very liberal who actually applaud him for challenging China. So I think on some policies, he's been willing to take a fresh perspective.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was going to get worse, not better. The idea of rolling the dice with some random person might be better than staying for existence.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think some of that area is very much appeals, and Trump's been actually quite good at some of that. I think Peter's view on Trump is pretty simple to describe, which is if you believe that the U.S. was on the wrong trajectory and wrong course,”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I also believe, you know, I think I was the first person perhaps who funded Never Trump. I think if you do some research, you'll see that. So, no, not the biggest fan of the president.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Solution to healthcare is very counterproductive in many ways, but it doesn't excuse conservatives from having better answers, but it sometimes frustrates me that when we were out of power, that we weren't developing better answers to a lot of these problems. And so I get annoyed once in a while every like 10 years, you see an up-and-coming conservative who has some fresh perspective and ideas and it's invigorating. Sometimes they do well in the political world. Sometimes they get elected. Sometimes they get elected and they disappoint you because they're like any other politician. But so it's like a sine wave of emotions being a conservative because you get optimistic about somebody or something.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it's hard to be conservative sometimes, not just in Silicon Valley, because It frustrates me often when conservatives don't do the hard work of coming up with innovative solutions to real problems. Being a conservative doesn't mean not having a solution. It means having a different solution, often one that's not based upon government intervention. But so, for example, in healthcare, the U.S. government...”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be deported to Germany. Twitter's up to its usual nonsense. He does have it, yes. I mean, Cambridge Analytics is pretty funny. I mean, again, I've used”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, now there's a question Do you feel loyalty to the USA when so many of the libertarians are so anti-government and seemly pro-Russia? Okay. And then there's another one about your friendship with Peter Thiel, who was obviously controversial because his links with Donald Trump. Does he think that Thiel is implicated in Cambridge Analytica scandal and so on? Will it be interviewed by Mueller go to federal prison, be deported to Germany because he's a...”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To me, conservative means that there's right and wrong and that there's a meritocratic benchmark that one can use to look at ideas.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, Churchill changed parties three times, changed his views on several topics. But on the biggest issues, the biggest moments of his life, he was right.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Hollywood because of that Oh, so the third one is this new one volume biography of Churchill. So I've read Churchill biographies before. This may be the best one volume. I mean, obviously, if you really want to read about Churchill, you have to read more than one volume because his history, his life was full of so many dimensions. Yeah. But this is a very good one. Who is it, Bye? Oh, man, spacing on the author's name. It was just published. It's doing very well. It's selling quite well, which is pretty impressive in its own right because it's like a still one volume means 900 pages in Churchill. But I really enjoy it so far. I'm only about 100 pages. It's contrary to the contrary.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“These successful companies. Behind the scenes, there was a hell of a lot of work and inspiration and tenacity that went into these things. Yeah. He was a real nut. He's not well liked in Hollywood because of that. All right. I'm going to ask another. What's the third one?”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing I liked is, first of all, it's very candid, it's intellectually honest, it's personally honest. I'm a kind of an amateur observer of Hollywood, and I found it fascinating how fine the line is between success and failure, how many of these famous movies that won Academy Awards or that I grew up watching and were kind of cultural icons were just...”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More mainstream because there's now enough data to overcome all the suppression. But it reminds you that even quote unquote science and medicine isn't immune from political fights. And these political fights cost many people their lives because we spent a century not innovating on how to use your immune system to cure in quotes cancer. So that was one. Second one is I was finishing Mike Ovitz's autobiography, which I highly recommend. It's a great tale in many ways.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I read this really great book on cancer innovation called Breakthrough, which is incredibly impressive in terms of its ability to tell the story of how using your own immune system to fight cancer is better than radiology or chemotherapy. But it had been suppressed by the medical community for a century. So this has been known since the 1890s that you can, at least in some kinds of cancer, use your own immune system to fight cancer. But a lot of medical people and experts didn't believe this. And so they actively suppressed this knowledge. And people were dying as they're suppressing this knowledge. It's now becoming...”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, just fight. That's so archaic Well, I like to think from first principles, and I like to think for myself, which means occasionally I line with you and occasionally I don't, but I like to be a non-derivative thinker. It's not always possible. Everybody lives in concentric circles, your professional circles, your social circles, and that obviously influences you. But I try to have my own perspective. I like to read. For example, my free time, I read books, and that occasionally changes my thinking. Yeah, I read old school books. That's what I was doing yesterday. Mostly yesterday being Jewish, was not celebrating holiday. I was reading. I read like three books yesterday.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's true. That's 100% true. All right, I'm going to ask some, I asked a question of what I should ask you on Twitter. And of course, Antonio, he's such a pain in the assonio Garcia Martinez, who was also a very argumentative person on Twitter, and I enjoy him doing that. I think we want a video of the probable fist fight. We don't fist fight. The gays don't fist fight anymore. No, fist fight. That's so archaic. So here's one from Jason Delray, actually. What is the definition of contrarian in 2019? Because you're known as a contrarian.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get the money more traditional sources doesn't mean all Americans are good or all American money is clean, but fundamentally if you're taking money from an investor that's trying to effectively launder the money, which is what a lot of countries have been doing. And that's been propping up some of these late stage financings. To me, I think that means you go public. And if you go public, you take money from normal everyday Americans. You have the disclosure obligations and the serious scrutiny and accounting requirements that's associated with taking money for normal Americans, but that degree of disclosure and credibility and scrutiny and transparency is actually a good thing. I think it's a good thing for your company actually to be subject to auditors and subject to reporting.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, that's true. You do have this issue of late stage money, right? A lot of money comes from Russia, which is no longer acceptable. You have money coming from Saudi Arabia, which at least to me should be unacceptable. And you have money from China, which has its own set of issues. And that actually the money from China may not be coming for other reasons internal to China anyway.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the big funder. It's the big funder There is no vision fund with outside. Is there any clean money? I mean, where it comes from? They were stack ranking at a party that I was at recently. Yeah, no, that's true.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's more like 90% It's half of you allow them to do accounting gimmicks, it's 90%, 80 to 90 percent. It's the big thunder. It's the big funder. There is no vision fund without significant.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over time, probably not. In the short term, yes, because especially as the economy gets softer in Silicon Valley, the desperation for money among late-stage companies is going to be higher. But a lot of entrepreneurs are definitely having these debates. And some have been hesitant. I know some entrepreneurs who could have taken Southbank money that have decided.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or maybe three years ago, actually, that people boycott in Silicon Valley, North Carolina, or Georgia for somewhat mundane legal changes, you know, whether it's the bathroom labeling or something equivalent. Yet they take money from Saudi Arabia where it's illegal to be gay. It's like illegal, like a crime. It's not just like you can't go to the bathroom that you choose. It's like we're going to shoot you. Or if you're Jewish, you could be discriminated against in any possibleness. So I think people are incredibly hypocritical here.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Soft bank and others. Saudi Arabia has discriminated against gays, women, Jews officially, explicitly for decades. It executes people who are Gay. It executes people who are Jewish. So the idea that they would murder someone isn't surprising to me. To me, it's surprising that more people weren't paying attention to the evils of Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years. Now, there's a reason why, as they've been politically helpful with some other battles that the United States has had in the Middle East. So it's a marriage of convenience. But that doesn't mean that Silicon Valley should be participating in this. We talked on your show, actually your podcast, two and a half years ago.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This stuff's going to be very embarrassing. So the question is, what's the legal doctrine and legal hook that allows someone to subpoena this evidence and get their hands on this treasure trobe? Once they get the treasure trobe, all hell's going to break loose because there's going to be very embarrassing”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's impossible to police those perfectly. Like as someone who used to run companies, you can try to remind people that one day someone may look at this out of context and please be careful what you write. But you need people to do their jobs too, which is to communicate directly, succinctly, powerfully. Right.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think podcasts are easier than TV interviews because Nixon, the famous Kennedy Nixon problem, arguably American history. I don't like to be on TV anyway. So in any event, I suspect you're going to see them on stage a lot. And that will cause someone to screw up where they say something inappropriate, you know, not ideally framed that leads to an investigation, which may uncover some evidence. I think, for example, if you were to subpoena, Facebook and Google, you would find documents that are not particularly exciting. I get their emails.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can really create a firestorm. And most of these tech leaders have not been under pressure like that. It's not like doing a journalist interview. It's more like doing a TV interview. And a TV is different. TV interviews are really difficult.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you're going to see a lot more hearings. So, certainly, the gavel, the fact that the Democrats have control of the gavels, one of the subtle nuances of being the majority in the House is you can call hearings whenever you want. Only the majority can schedule hearings. So I think you're going to see Sundar on stage a lot more and Nadie Mark on stage and Cheryl on stage.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, absolutely. You need neutral principles. And if you don't have a neutral principle, I don't think you want to start a process where you're just scapegoating people. That's kind of Nixonian, actually. In some ways, and I think that's a very bad precedent.”
2019-01-05 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Keith Rabois · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT