Saudi Arabia discloses LP positions & SEC charges Frank founder with fraud | E1713
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
First up, Jason touches on Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund disclosing which VC firms it has made LP investments in (2:48), which leads to him pondering the human rights issues and if founders care where their money comes from (18:52). Jason caps off the show by breaking down the SEC’s charges against Frank founder Charlie Javice for allegedly closing a $175M acquisition based on over 4M fake user accounts (30:18).
(0:00) Jason kicks off today’s show
(2:48) Saudi Arabia discloses LP positions
(8:24) MasterClass - Get 15% off an annual membership at https://masterclass.com/startups
(9:52) Why is Saudi Arabia diversifying?
(17:21) Miro - Sign up for a free account at https://miro.com/startups
(18:52) Founders’ thoughts on where their funding comes from
(21:26) Jason’s passion for human rights
(29:01) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist
(30:18) Frank founder charged with fraud
(33:03) Be clear about your customers
(34:35) Allegations against Charlie Javice
(47:00) Lessons for founders
(44:56) Ivy League convicts
LINKS:
Sanabil Investments LP Disclosure document
https://www.sanabil.com/en/our-partners/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, everybody, welcome to Tuesday. |
| 0:01.1 | We have a great show for you. |
| 0:02.2 | I was going to do a quick news hit |
| 0:03.3 | and then put an interview on the back of this, |
| 0:04.7 | but the two news stories were so important. |
| 0:06.8 | And I think we need to double click on them. |
| 0:09.8 | The first is a couple of hours after we spoke |
| 0:12.0 | about the Andreessen Horowitz founders, Ben Horowitz |
| 0:15.2 | and Mark Andreessen speaking with Adam Newman |
| 0:18.1 | at this Saudi Arabian conference for startups in Miami, |
| 0:22.7 | the Saudi wealth fund disclosed the VC firms |
| 0:25.3 | that they were LPs in an interesting public relations |
| 0:28.8 | maneuver. |
| 0:30.0 | And we'll talk about who's on the list, |
| 0:31.6 | not that that matters, it's basically who's who. |
| 0:33.8 | But I'll break down how we at Silicon Valley |
| 0:37.6 | should think about taking money from countries |
| 0:41.1 | that are authoritarian, whether it's Russia, |
| 0:43.7 | which invested a lot of money in US companies |
| 0:45.6 | during the last cycle, the Facebook cycle, famously China |
| 0:49.3 | and us investing in China and China investing in us |
| 0:52.4 | as well as countries in the Middle East. |
... |
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