Lonsdale Says Tech Is Stepping up in Pandemic

to have you here with Carolin myself. Thanks Jason for having me on. All Right, so you're there in the hotbed of innovation and you look at things from all angles. I gotta start by asking you, how did we get here? What went wrong that we miss judged this or or just sort of misplayed it as it were? You know, these these these these these things are hard. I'm inspired by a lot of them, seeing coming out of the entpreneurs of the business world. I'm I'm someone disheartened by

seeing how our government works. One of my friends, Bob Nelson told the end of January, so there's a sixty chances of the pandemic. And he's a great bio investor. He talks people in China and here, and so the the experts really knew this was coming. Late January, started February, and you know, I've been trying to look at the government pandemic response. There's about eighteen plans we've made over the last twenty years. There's hundreds of pages of unreadable PDF.

It's clear our federal government as a giant pledgeocracy that doesn't really know how to function with these sorts of plans. Okay, so that's fair enough. Um so what needs to change? Well, you know, I think number one, you need you need competent leaders who have already gained these things ahead of time. I think there's there's plans, and there's actually practicing ahead of time and doing doing gamification and really following up

and what you learn. And so no matter what five year plans, pen your plans you make, I think they should actually run some simulations. Now, unfortunately this is a world simulation, We're gonna learn a lot. There should be one group in charge. There should be accountability. You know, the FDA is not set up to make decisions quickly.

We need a special group at the FDA that has to make decisions much more put clear, I mean, they're still test sitting at home on shelves right now, hundreds of thousands of testing, these labs for at home testing, and it's it drives me crazy how slow these things are going. And to be fair, I mean, there were administrations on both sides of the aisle that some would say,

you know that we've ignored this kind of situation. I think part of the problem, though, Joe, is we don't do a lot of long term planning, certainly not um in this government. Well, it's it's it's it's fascinating. I mean, I think Congress passed the Pandemic and All Hazzard's Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act nineteen six months ago. There was

a Pandemic Act six months ago that was passed. They're they're literally hundreds of pages of planning sitting in pds and bureaucracies with acronyms that I don't know how to play the opposite sup game in Washington, d C. But there's hundreds of these acronyms. And so so it's funny because some people are doing the planning, but it's clears not tied to leadership and accountability in terms of how

you actually got these things done. You know, Joe, one of the things that's been interesting to us, I think watching all of this, and you've had a front row seat, I believe they're in California to this, is, you know, governor is really stepping to the four you know, you think about Gavin Newsom, you think about Mario Cuomo, you think about some other governors who who have really stepped in pretty aggressively here, taken the bull by the horns,

however you want to describe it. What do you make of that sort of this being handled at the state level. Is that what needed to happen? Is that what should happen going forward? What's the sort of federal versus state versus local approach here? Well, that's a that's a great question. You do have different situations on the ground locally. I think federalism is one of the great things about how our country works. And you have had governors stuff up.

You know, what I was really impressed by is the big technology companies here in Silicon Valley. A lot of them stepped up even a week two weeks ahead of the governor have people working from home. My firm only works only work from home. So we've learned that from some of the bigger firms where the people they're figured out ahead of time, and that that that was really

often to see. So let's talk about Silicon Valley. Um. You know, we often look to you guys for innovation, and rightly so across all sorts of aspects of technology and life and et cetera. Uh, what have you seen on the ground Take a steeper in there? Sure, Well, you know, I'm really proud of a lot of what I'm seeing, or you're seeing the kind of classic innovation

entreprenial energy really stuff up you have. You know, one of the things I was most inspired by is an engineer bloom Energy figured out with his team how to fix these ventilators that were broken were since to Los Angeles. They're supposed to take a month to fix for the manufacturer. They fix them in days, but the governor sent them back over. And you've seen a lot of things like

that where people are working hard to get supplies. My you know, my team and a bunch of my friends started Operation maths dot org, which has brought over a million, sorry, over a billion masks into the country in the last month, partnering with FEMA and with logistics groups all over the world. So you see a lot of people step up and use their networks, use their innovation to really help out here.

And why are they able to do that? I mean why, I mean, I guess I'm taking you into sort of the ethos of Silicon Valley here, But you know, why does it happen there in a way or at a velocity maybe that it doesn't happen elsewhere. Well, you know, most people what they do for a living is what they do for a in Silicon Valley. What you do for living is we build new companies, We create new organizations. We we reach out to people all over the world

to get feedback and help. Every time we're creating something new, My team launches two to three new companies a year. So that these guys who are used to watching companies, they've gone on the phone with their logistics contacts in China and Mexico, in Brazil with people who run these companies.

They've gone the phone with our friends who are very wealthy and successful over there and know who the manufacturers are, and we started making phone calls, started sourcing things, and and and you know, there's these global networks exist that are tied to the heart of Silicon Valley, to the entrepreneurial part of our country where we're able to get

things done quickly. So what what access has you know, either you and your company or other members of Silicon Valley really had to the administration and helping to deal with this virus. You know, they've they've they've reached out on what I wouldn't say they have very good connections Silicon Valley. I'm friends with a lot of the cool

see people. There are a lot of my friends who are on the boards of Stanford Hospital, UCSF Hospital UM as you guess, the very skeptical of the Trump's administration. I've been able to put some of them together and they had some really good conversations. As much as they're still skeptical of the administration, that a lot of them have really appreciated working with the people in the White House to coordinate various supplies or to help with technology.

Right now, I think we're still trying to solve a lot of problems at the White House right now about how people are going to get back to work, and you know, there's there's a role for us to play out here, and Joe, what are the interesting elements of all? This is something that's not new at all. You know, it goes back to the last century, which is the Defense Production Act and sort of being invoked not being invoked. It feels like there's misunderstanding even in the administration about

what it should do, what it can do. What's your read on that, and how that interaction should take place between the government and private industry. You know, I think if it gets to a point where the industry is not cooperating for some reason, it makes sense to invoke it.

I think the best way to work with people, just from what I found out over the years, the way authority really works well is you is you is you inspire them and you give them the goals and you make sure they're a hunter per cent a line and if they are, uh, you don't really need force. If anything, force gets in the way at that point. So I

think the mistakes though that was made. They should have had very clear intensive They should have said the government's willing to pay this much for working ventilator, this much per mask and coordinated and just and just start getting people to be confident to invest in building these four or five six weeks ago, because when you put out the call to everyone, there's a lot of people bottom

up who will do things. I think it's a mistake to only work with the big companies, which has really been what they've been doing is mostly focusing on those film productive companies, right, But it's about leadership and being very clear about what's going on, um to create, to be able to create programs so that everybody understands what's

going on. We're going to come back and talk with somewhere with Joe Lonsdale, he's partnered at eight VC, co founder of Palanteer, on the phone from Oakland, California, so we'll continue that in just a moment. Jason, Yeah, it's really interesting to hear all those perspectives and you know, really going down to level understanding kind of how Silicon

Valley works in a lot of ways. I think we know it intuitively, but hearing him explain it so specifically about picking up the phone and calling and also moving with that sense of urgency that I feel like obviously we certainly need right now and was missing at the beginning, also understanding you know where this started, and still with us Joe Lonsdale, partner at eight VC, co founder of

Palanteer and a number of other companies. We're going to get into some of that as we continue our conversation. He's joining us on the phone from Palo Alto right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley. Joe, great to have you still with us. So I gotta ask you. You have started a bunch of companies, you invest in companies you mentioned in the earlier part of the conversation, you know, standing up two to three companies a year.

This is a time obviously have a lot of uncertainty, but it's got to be at least in part, a time of opportunity to think about what's next. What are you thinking about now? You know, there's there's a lot of areas that we're working on that happened to overlap

with this. The one I'm most excited about is, you know, there's a renaissance and biology going on out here in Silicon Valley, and we happened to start a company last year with some technology out of Cornell and Northwestern University that helps produce antibodies really quickly, and there's technology lets you do it in a self free way. And you've

probably heard people who recovered from COVID nineteen. There's antibodies in their blood that would cure other people, and we can actually use blood from those people to cure people. There's not enough of it around, but what you can do, and you can take using antibodies and produce them and scale them up. So this company is partnering with other antibody companies, were trying to rush the therapeutic to market,

hoping he tested in the next month or two. So that's a really cool example of something going on on here. Maybe maybe you can contribute. Yeah, that's actually something we've been talking about a lot this week. There's a team up at Columbia University working on this um. There's several groups and thinking that this is a key step in kind of getting the virus under control. I do feel

like biotech in particular, this whole world of medicine. There's just so much we talk about disruption, we throw around the world casually, but there is so much still in medicine and science Joe that has yet to be figured out. It's a it's a real bright spot in our civilization because you know, there's always big break through's Jennifer down

out here at Berkeley helps over Christopher. You know, just eight years ago, all these things that used to be really slow and six months of work in a lab you can now do in a day and tests and learn, so the the pace of learning is so fast, and I really hope a lot of this is going to be applied to what's going on right now. There's a lot of promising cures, a lot of promising vaccines. You know that this is what we really need to help here.

And Joe, you know, it brings me to something that we've talked with a bunch of those aforementioned researchers about, including down Johns Hopkins as well, this notion that because of the sense of urgency, maybe folks are maybe a little more willing to let their guard down, collaborate a little bit more. Are you seeing that or is that

a little Bollyanna I should be to think definitely. Maybe about three weeks ago now, I put something up on Twitter about how this company could help Pardner with other companies for antibio therapeutics and said, here's the help we need, and I must have gotten a hundred and twenty notes from people mostly in Silicon Valley saying I have the best expert on this. I have the best expert on that, and it's just been really awesome to see people get together and collaborate, and it's it's made it go a

lot faster than it ever would have. So it's so, you know, I definitely think then spirative America as we all get together and we work on problems together, mom we need to. So does it slow down though after we get on the other side. I asked that because I mentioned that team up at Colombia who back during Stars.

They said they needed like about a twenty million dollars, not a lot of money in terms of research money, and they could have figured out how to deal with that virus, but they said after it was dealt with, after the kind of the hysteria calmed down, nobody was interested in committing money to it. Does that happen when we get on the other side of this, or has something dramatically changed because of the extent of this virus?

I mean, I hope, I'd hope that this changes. You know that it's a great question that you can go back to the pandemic plans. We were talking about. The government had a bunch of ventilators they're supposed to produce, and the way the contracting was done is they just never got them done it. You can blame the company, you can blame the government, but really what it was is a lack of focused, lack of competent people who cared enough to follow up. I don't think you're gonna

see that this time around. I think people are going to really care to be on top of this for next time, you know, Joe. One of the questions we've been asking all of our big, big guests this week across our network, across the entire Bloomberg News empire is what changes on the other side of this in the world, Like literally, just think as big as you possibly can. Maybe that's being underappreciated here. It is literally something I know you you've got to be thinking about. What do

you make of that? You know? The thing? The thing the thing a lot about is how the nature of works in hiring changes. I think a lot of people are being forced to use these tools that have been created to work from home for the first time, and they're realizing that works. I think I think this is embarrassed commercial real estate. That's the obvious one. The other one, know that I'm a little curious about, is does this

change how we hire around the world. Unfortunately, it probably pushes outsourcing a lot more for certain types of jobs in the US as well, because you can hire someone just as well who doesn't have to necessarily live in your town. So in some ways it's positive for the

world more dynamic economy. In other ways, it could be another pressure on the middle class, which is which I'm a little bit worried about well, and I do wonder about that if we can go a little bit deeper on that, because we we are also sort of seeing inequality of the which we knew existed, maybe even more starkly than than we did before. Do do you think this causes action on that or does it further exacerbate

before it gets better? You know, I agree that we're definitely seeing in equality of of how people are are being able to whether it is or not. To me, the biggest causes of inequality is really sailing here in the Bay Area. It's cost of living, whether or not you want to say it's education, healthcare, or just even rents and to live around here in these high growth areas.

I really hope it gets us to focus on cost of living and you make your obvious reforms to fix these things, to allow more building in the Bay Area and in other areas like this, to really figure it out, and healthcare and education. So I would hope this is focus on those issues. These are issues that are all long overdo and being tackles. Hopefully there's positive some ways

to go after them. So I got to ask you just to wrap up here, Um, Joe, how does our world change as a result of the coronavirus pandemic out?

You know, my my biggest hope is that is that a year from now, we've confronted it and we're ready for anything like this next time, and we're we're addressing some of these issues around costs of living, We're addressing some of these some of these issues around around you know, people dying from the flu in general, and viruses in general, and open areas, which I think we're all gonna be

going after right now. So hopefully hopefully brings our society closer together, gets us to recognize some of what the great people can do in the technology innovation world to help and lets us solve challenges. That would be the optimistic take. And can I ask you wait thirty seconds, what what will be different? Well, you know, I think it's gonna be I think I think there's gonna be some industries that are really gonna struggle for a long time. I think people realize they don't need to be on

planes all the time. I think people realize that they don't need to rent out. You know, as many of these Smig Crush and John commercial real estate areas, Um, it could mean construction and other industries are gonna are gonna have a little bit of a tougher time for the next five or ten years. Um. So it's there's

definitely gonna be big, big changes in the economy. All right, Well, we really appreciate your time here on a Friday afternoon, chilled on sale, partner at a VC, co founder of Palentteer, and a number of other companies you have heard of and used watch this space because these are the folks who you really want to keep an eye on as

things evolved and the fast twitch of Silicon Valley. It is coming to the four here for sure, uh Carol, And you know well and also hearing him talk about the antibodi's thing, having heard it, you know, from a couple of doctors. Uh, that is really really interesting to me. And you do wonder if that's the accelerant that we need, and especially if we continue to get viruses of this magnitude um, this is a way to deal with them going forward,