E52: Trump's SPAC, peak venture liquidity, tech as an economic ladder, Dems overplaying their hand

• Product launch: Trump Media & Technology Group did in fact launch Truth Social as a functioning social app. It debuted on Apple’s App Store on February 21, 2022 and quickly hit the top of the free-app charts, with ongoing iOS, Android, and web clients now in active use. This contradicts the claim that they would "never get a product out the door." (cnbc.com)

• User numbers in the first year: Trump Media does not publish official user stats, but a Reuters‑based timeline compiled by SEO.ai estimates that Truth Social’s monthly active users grew from about 0.5 million at launch in February 2022 to ~5.0 million in November 2022, ~5.5 million in December 2022, and ~6.0–6.5 million in January–February 2023. That puts first‑year usage clearly in the “on the order of 5–10 million” range. (seo.ai) These figures are consistent with later independent estimates that place Truth Social’s active user base in the mid‑single‑digit millions (roughly 5–6.3 million monthly active users) by 2024–2025. (en.wikipedia.org)

• Overall assessment: The real world outcome is: (a) a real, publicly launched product exists (falsifying the “never launch” part), and (b) its scale has indeed been in roughly the 5–10 million‑user band rather than anything massive (matching only the conditional back‑up claim). Because the normalized prediction includes both "will never successfully launch" and the conditional user‑range statement, the combined prediction, taken literally, resolves to false even though the conditional piece was directionally accurate. Therefore the overall prediction is scored as wrong.

What was predicted?

Chamath predicted that:

1. The Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) / Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) deal would actually complete its de‑SPAC.
2. At closing, the enterprise value would be extremely high relative to expectations, such that observers would be surprised.

Did the merger (de‑SPAC) actually close?

Yes.

• DWAC and TMTG completed their merger in late March 2024; TMTG became the public company and DWAC ceased to exist as a standalone SPAC.(ae.marketscreener.com)
• The combined company began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker DJT on March 26, 2024.(cnbc.com)

This directly confirms the “it will de‑SPAC” part of the prediction.

How high was the valuation at closing, relative to prior expectations?

Deal / baseline expectations in 2021:

• The original merger agreement valued Trump Media at an initial enterprise value of $875 million, with potential earn‑outs lifting that to up to $1.7 billion if the stock performed well post‑combination.(sec.gov)
  This was the formal, stated EV baseline.

Market pricing at and immediately after de‑SPAC:

• On March 26, 2024, DJT’s first trading day, the stock closed at $57.99, giving the company a market value of about $7.85 billion.(investor.wedbush.com)
• CNBC similarly reported that Trump’s majority stake was worth over $5 billion during midday trading on the debut, implying a total equity value in the mid‑single‑digit billions.(cnbc.com)
• Commentators noted that a business with only a few million dollars of annual revenue was being valued around $6–8 billion, describing it as a meme‑stock‑type valuation.(mediapost.com)

Relative to the deal EV of $875M–$1.7B, the actual market‑implied enterprise value at closing was several times higher (roughly 4–9×), which fits the prediction that closing EV would be “very high” versus the original expectations embedded in the merger terms.

Expectations by the time of closing (skepticism the deal would ever get there):

• In 2022–2023, multiple investigations and SEC scrutiny created substantial doubt that the merger would close at all; short‑seller Kerrisdale Capital explicitly argued DWAC would never secure regulatory approval to close the merger.(benzinga.com)
• DWAC’s share price had collapsed from triple‑digit highs in 2021 to the mid‑teens by late 2022 amid worries about liquidation and failed extensions.(cnbc.com)

Against that backdrop—where a non‑trivial camp expected no deal or a much more modest outcome—the fact that the merger did close and produced a ~$7–8B equity value for a tiny‑revenue company was indeed far above what many skeptics and more conservative observers were expecting.

Were observers “shocked” by the valuation?

"Shocked" is subjective, but there is clear evidence that:

• Financial and media commentary repeatedly highlighted how disproportionately large the valuation was compared with the company’s revenues (on the order of a few million dollars per year), often in a mocking or incredulous tone.(mediapost.com)
• Coverage framed DJT as a meme stock driven by politics and retail enthusiasm rather than fundamentals, underlining how unusual the valuation was.(investor.wedbush.com)

While “everyone will be shocked” can’t be measured precisely, the objective facts are that the deal closed and the market‑implied enterprise value at closing was many times the original deal EV and widely described as extraordinary given the fundamentals.

Conclusion

• The deal did de‑SPAC, despite significant regulatory and legal overhang.
• At and immediately after closing, Trump Media / DJT traded at an enterprise/equity value massively above both the agreed 2021 deal valuation and what many skeptics thought was plausible, provoking exactly the kind of disbelief Chamath alluded to.

Given those facts, the prediction is best classified as right.

Friedberg’s statement was explicitly conditional: he said that if the DWAC–Trump Media SPAC “actually does de‑SPAC at this valuation,” then Trump would not run again because he’d have about “$20 billion” of equity value in the new media business.(podscripts.co)

What actually happened:

• The DWAC–Trump Media & Technology Group merger did not close at anything close to a ~$20B equity valuation. When trading in DJT began on March 26, 2024, public estimates of the company’s market cap were in the mid–single‑digit billions (roughly $2.7–9.5B depending on share-count assumptions), and Trump’s stake was valued in the mid‑single‑digit billions, not ~$20B.(cnbc.com)
• The merger itself was completed in late March 2024.(accessnewswire.com)
• Separately, Trump did run for president again: he announced his 2024 candidacy on November 15, 2022, later secured the Republican nomination in July 2024, won the November 6, 2024 election, and was inaugurated again on January 20, 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)

However, Friedberg’s prediction was of the form: If (deal closes at ~20B valuation), then (Trump won’t run again). Because the antecedent never occurred — the deal closed but at far lower valuations than the ~$20B level he was talking about — we can’t directly observe the world in which his condition is satisfied. The truth of the counterfactual “if Trump had actually gotten a ~$20B equity value from this SPAC, he would not have run again” therefore cannot be determined from real‑world outcomes.

Given that the condition for the prediction was not met, and the statement is about a hypothetical scenario, the forecast cannot be cleanly scored as right or wrong. It is best classified as ambiguous: enough time has passed, but whether the prediction would have held under its stated condition is inherently unresolvable.

The prediction was that for the 2024 U.S. presidential election there was roughly a 50% chance Joe Biden would be on the general-election ballot and a 50% chance Donald Trump would be on the general-election ballot.

What actually happened:

• Joe Biden was the Democratic Party nominee and appeared on the 2024 general-election presidential ballot.
• Donald Trump was the Republican Party nominee and appeared on the 2024 general-election presidential ballot.

Both Biden and Trump were in fact on the ballot, so ex post the realized outcome was that both appeared, not that each only had a 50% chance of doing so.

While you can’t strictly falsify a probabilistic statement from a single outcome in a formal statistical sense, for the purposes of judging this concrete, binary forecast about who would be on the 2024 ballot, the world that occurred ("both on") is inconsistent with the implication that it was only a 25% joint-probability scenario (0.5 × 0.5). Treated as a practical prediction about who would run, it did not match reality.

Therefore, evaluated against what actually happened in the 2024 election, the prediction is best classified as wrong.

The prediction had two clear components:

1. Trump would focus on running his media company instead of running for president again.
   This did not come true. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), parent of Truth Social, did go public via a SPAC merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. in March 2024 and now trades under ticker DJT, with Trump as the dominant shareholder. (accessnewswire.com) However, Donald Trump formally announced a 2024 presidential campaign on November 15, 2022, became the Republican Party’s presumptive and then official nominee in 2024, and went on to win the 2024 presidential election. (en.wikipedia.org) He was inaugurated again on January 20, 2025, and is now serving as president, actively shaping GOP strategy for the 2026 midterms. (reuters.com) This directly contradicts the idea that he would choose running the media empire instead of returning to the presidency.

2. If it’s not Biden, the Democratic nominee would be a Biden-aligned proxy rather than a significantly different ideological choice.
   This did come true. President Joe Biden initially ran for re‑election and secured enough delegates, but after a widely criticized June 2024 debate performance he withdrew from the race on July 21, 2024. (en.wikipedia.org) Biden endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, who was subsequently chosen as the Democratic nominee on August 5, 2024. (en.wikipedia.org) Harris had served as his VP and ran on a platform broadly continuous with Biden’s, fitting well with the notion of a Biden-aligned proxy.

Because the first, very specific claim (Trump opting for the media company instead of another presidential run) is clearly false, while the conditional second claim about a Biden-aligned proxy nominee is true, the overall combined prediction is best judged as wrong.

Available evidence shows that Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) neither (a) became a major, M&A‑driven consolidator of media/tech assets nor (b) "really shake[d] up" or reshaped the U.S. media landscape by late 2025.

On the strategy side, TMTG’s own 2024 results and 2025 filings describe it as operating Truth Social and building out related products like the Truth+ streaming service and the Truth.Fi financial/fintech brand. Management now says it is exploring mergers and acquisitions and may evolve into a holding company, but the same filings emphasize that 2024 was spent improving its own platforms and infrastructure rather than integrating acquired media or tech firms. There is no record of TMTG acquiring major media companies; instead, its expansion has been via organic product launches and partnerships (e.g., with Crypto.com, and a separate SPAC-based CRO digital-asset treasury venture), not transformative roll‑up acquisitions of existing U.S. media assets.(globenewswire.com)

On the impact side, Truth Social remains a relatively small, niche "alt‑tech" social network. Estimates for early 2025 put it at roughly 6.3 million active users, far below major platforms, and SimilarWeb/CNN data cited in public sources show its daily active users in the hundreds of thousands versus tens or hundreds of millions on X, Threads, Reddit, etc.(seo.ai) Financially, TMTG generated only about $4 million in revenue in 2023 and around $3.6 million in 2024 while posting very large net losses (on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars), dramatically underperforming its own earlier projections of tens of millions of users and billions in revenue by the mid‑2020s.(forbes.com) This scale and performance are inconsistent with any broad, structural reshaping of the U.S. media ecosystem.

Because TMTG did not, in practice, pursue a large, M&A‑led consolidation of media/tech assets and also failed to produce a significant disruption of the U.S. media landscape, Chamath’s prediction—"this is going to really shake up the media landscape" if run as an M&A vehicle—has not come true.

Chamath predicted in October 2021 that at some future point the tech and venture market would undergo a major valuation reset, likening it to the dot‑com crash and arguing that the preceding liquidity would make the correction particularly violent.

Within roughly a year, this scenario occurred:

• Public tech bear market: The Nasdaq Composite entered a bear market from November 2021 to December 2022, falling about 33% from its peak, compared with a roughly 78% drawdown during the 2000–02 dot‑com bust. (aol.com) While not as deep at the index level as 2000–02, it was still one of the worst Nasdaq bear markets since then.

• Speculative tech wiped out (dot‑com‑scale losses): Highly valued, liquidity‑fueled tech names experienced collapses comparable to the dot‑com era. The ARK Innovation ETF (a basket of high‑growth, unprofitable tech) suffered a peak‑to‑trough drawdown of about 80.9% between February 2021 and December 2022, on par with the Nasdaq’s 78% collapse in the dot‑com crash. (portfolioslab.com) ARK’s fintech ETF saw a similar maximum drawdown of about 78.6% ending in December 2022. (portfolioslab.com) Bessemer’s Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index, tracking high‑growth SaaS names, fell over 40% in 2022 from its 2021 peak, retracing all the way back to 2020 levels. (bvp.com) These moves represent a severe rerating of the exact segment Chamath was talking about.

• Venture and late‑stage funding reset: Venture markets also saw a dramatic reversal from 2021’s liquidity boom. In the US, total VC investment value in 2022 shrank 40.8% versus 2021, with deal volume down nearly 25%. (globaldata.com) Globally, December 2022 venture deal value was down 66.7% year‑over‑year, reflecting a sharp pullback from the 2021 funding frenzy. (spglobal.com) By 2023, total global VC funding had fallen about 40% from 2022 to 2023 and, by 2024, was roughly 50%+ below 2021’s peak, indicating a sustained VC “winter” after the boom. (spglobal.com) This is exactly the sort of valuation reset and liquidity withdrawal he described.

• Violent mark‑downs for crossover investors: Large crossover and growth funds that had aggressively deployed 2020–21 liquidity into tech and late‑stage venture were hit especially hard. Tiger Global’s flagship fund lost over 50% in 2022 amid the tech sell‑off, with reports of around $17 billion in losses wiping out much of a decade of gains. (cnbc.com) Even by the end of 2024 its big pandemic‑era private tech fund remained in the red despite an AI‑driven rebound, underscoring how brutal the reset was for capital that had chased 2020–21 valuations. (businessinsider.com)

Relative to the dot‑com crash, the broad Nasdaq decline was smaller, but in the speculative, liquidity‑driven parts of tech and in late‑stage venture, drawdowns (70–80% losses, funding collapsing by roughly half or more, and major crossover funds suffering historic hits) were of very similar magnitude to 2000–02. Chamath did not specify a date or catalyst, only that such a reset would "eventually" occur and would be made more violent by the prior liquidity. By 2022–23, that major valuation reset had clearly happened in exactly the areas he identified.

Given this evidence, the prediction that there would be a violent, dot‑com‑style rerating in tech and venture due to excess liquidity is best judged as right.

It’s too early to definitively judge a prediction whose explicit horizon is “the next decade or two” (into the 2030s–2040s) based on only ~4 years of data since 2021.

That said, developments so far broadly align with his thesis that tech‑driven firms would keep disrupting large incumbent public companies rather than 2021 being a final peak bubble:

• The U.S. equity market has become more dominated by a handful of tech and tech‑adjacent giants. The “Magnificent Seven” (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla) now account for about one‑third to 37% of the S&P 500’s market cap, versus roughly 12% in 2015—an unprecedented level of concentration—and have massively outperformed the rest of the index. (finance.yahoo.com)
• Nvidia, whose business is central to AI and automation, became the first company to hit about a $4T market cap in 2025 and alone represents around 7% of the S&P 500; U.S. tech as a whole now commands over 30% of S&P 500 market value, far above its share of current earnings, reflecting large forward bets on continued tech disruption. (apnews.com)
• Automation in “old‑line” sectors has accelerated: industrial robot installations roughly doubled globally over the past decade, with 542,000 robots installed in 2024 and total operating stock near 4.7 million, and multiple industry forecasts project industrial robotics markets growing at double‑digit CAGRs well into the 2030s as manufacturing, automotive, electronics, and other traditional industries automate. (automation.com)

At the same time, there are signs of froth and bubble‑like behavior: tech and AI leaders trade at historically rich valuations, and commentators increasingly warn of an “AI bubble” or overconcentration risk in a small group of mega‑caps. (washingtonpost.com) This leaves open the possibility that what we’re seeing now could still resolve into a classic boom‑bust rather than a decades‑long disruption cycle.

Because the prediction’s main falsifiable claim is about persistence through at least the early 2030s, and we are only partway through that window, the fairest judgment as of late 2025 is “inconclusive (too early)”, even though current trends are directionally supportive of Friedberg’s view rather than contradicting it.

Available sources show that Chamath announced plans to visit Africa in December 2021 and to give talks there, but I could not find credible confirmation that the trip or the lectures actually occurred.

Evidence for the plan:

• In the All‑In E52 transcript (Oct 23, 2021), Chamath says: “I’m about to do this thing in Africa and I’m going there in December… we’re thinking of just doing a couple of like, lectures and talks and stuff… Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and there may be a couple of other [countries].” (podscripts.co)
• Shortly after, Kenyan Wall Street reported that he “has announced he will be making his maiden visit to Africa in December 2021”, specifically to Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, and that “during his trip, Chamath will be hosting a couple of fireside chats with the startup and investing community.” (kenyanwallstreet.com)
• A December 13, 2021 Medium article likewise describes him as announcing his maiden visit to Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, linking back to the All‑In episode and the Kenyan Wall Street piece. (medium.com)

However, despite searching news outlets, startup/tech media in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, and other public coverage of Chamath’s activities, I was unable to locate any post‑December‑2021 reports, photos, event recaps, or social posts documenting that these fireside chats or lectures actually took place, nor any later references by Chamath or the All‑In podcast to having just completed an Africa speaking tour.

Because we have strong evidence of a planned December 2021 Africa trip with multiple talks, but no reliable public record confirming whether the trip happened or was canceled/modified, the truth of the prediction cannot be determined from available information. Hence the outcome is best classified as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Chamath’s statement in E52 is an invitation/offer: he says he is going to Africa in December 2021 and tells Jason, “You can come with me in early December if you want,” while they joke about Jason being his “wingman as a service.”(podscripts.co)

Separately, Kenyan business media reported that Chamath had announced a maiden visit to Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and possibly other countries) in December 2021, explicitly citing this All-In episode as the source.(kenyanwallstreet.com) Those pieces describe Chamath’s planned trip but do not mention Jason joining him.

Despite searching for later evidence (podcast recaps, news coverage of the trip, or social posts tying both Chamath and Jason to an Africa tour in early December 2021), there are no reliable public sources that clearly state whether Jason actually accepted the invitation and traveled with Chamath. The absence of mention does not prove that he did not go; it only means it was not documented in the sources we can access.

Because (1) the original quote is conditional (an option to join, not a firm prediction of Jason going), and (2) more than enough time has passed but publicly available information does not resolve whether Jason took the trip, the outcome cannot be determined from current evidence. Hence the prediction is best classified as ambiguous rather than right or wrong.

By the end of Joe Biden’s first two years in office (January 20, 2023), he had signed a long list of major laws, including:

• The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (COVID and economic relief).
• The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (roughly $1 trillion over ten years for roads, bridges, transit, broadband, etc.).
• The CHIPS and Science Act to subsidize and onshore semiconductor manufacturing and fund R&D.
• The Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate and clean‑energy investment in U.S. history, which also empowers Medicare to negotiate drug prices and extends ACA subsidies.
• The Honoring our PACT Act (veterans’ toxic exposure benefits).
• The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (first major federal gun‑safety law in nearly 30 years).
• The Respect for Marriage Act, codifying federal recognition of same‑sex and interracial marriage.
• The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act and the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, among other measures.

These were all enacted during the 117th Congress (2021–22). (en.wikipedia.org) Mainstream reporting and analysis across outlets describe Biden’s first two years as one of the most productive legislative periods in decades, with the Associated Press noting that this agenda produced “the most productive first‑term Congress since President Lyndon Johnson,” and multiple analyses calling his first two years “among the most productive of any president in the past half century.” (thenationalherald.com)

By contrast, assessments of Donald Trump’s first two years (January 20, 2017–January 20, 2019) consistently emphasize a much thinner legislative record. The signature domestic achievement was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a large tax overhaul cutting corporate and individual rates. (en.wikipedia.org) Additional notable statutes in that window include the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and the First Step Act (criminal‑justice reform) in December 2018. (en.wikipedia.org) However, key Trump priorities such as full repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a major infrastructure bill failed in Congress, and much of his domestic policy impact came via executive actions that were later reversible. (en.wikipedia.org)

Political scientists who tally “major laws” find that the 2021–22 Congress under Biden passed more such significant bills than the typical recent Congress, while journalists and scholars routinely rank Biden’s two‑year legislative output as exceeding that of other modern presidents, a group that includes Trump. (dominionpost.com) There is no serious empirical literature arguing that Trump’s first two years produced more or larger legislative and policy accomplishments than Biden’s first two years; the weight of evidence points the other way.

Because Biden’s first two years are widely regarded as more legislatively productive and substantively consequential than Trump’s first two years, Chamath’s prediction that Trump would have “gotten more done” in his first two years than Biden would in his was not borne out.

In the Oct 23, 2021 episode (E52), Jason tells listeners they are "looking at locations in Miami" for an All-In Summit and "will have news shortly," directing them to sign up for email updates at summit.allinpodcast.co. (podscripts.co) Subsequent documentation shows that the first All-In Summit was indeed held in Miami Beach, Florida, at the New World Symphony from May 15–17, 2022. (aedeapartners.com) Biographical and media coverage of Jason Calacanis and the show likewise notes that their inaugural All-In Summit took place in Miami in May 2022. (en.wikipedia.org) Because the summit was scheduled and publicly announced as a Miami event within a few months of the episode, the promised location news for an All-In Summit in Miami did arrive in the "near future," so this prediction is right.

The first All-In Summit was in fact held in Miami Beach, Florida in May 2022, with the program running from May 15–17, 2022 at the New World Symphony. (en.wikipedia.org) This falls squarely within the March–April–May 2022 time window Jason said they were targeting. While the event ultimately spanned roughly 2–3 calendar days rather than a strictly defined two-day window, the core of the prediction—that the planned Miami summit would take place in spring 2022 within that March–May window—was borne out by the actual dates, so it is best judged as right.

The quote in context shows that Friedberg/Jason were promising a specific January LA event tied to Mark Suster’s Upfront Summit: they say they will “do an LA show in January… a live All-In podcast at the Upfront Summit, Mark Suster’s event in LA.”(podscripts.co)

However, the 2022 Upfront Summit—originally scheduled for January 26–27 at Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles(cooley.com)—was postponed about five weeks due to the Omicron COVID wave and actually took place March 1–2, 2022 in Los Angeles.(dot.la) There is no record that the All‑In hosts did a separate live LA show in January 2022 outside of Upfront, and coverage of their first major branded live event instead points to the All‑In Summit held later in May 2022 in Miami, not Los Angeles.(en.wikipedia.org)

Because the conference they tied the promise to was moved out of January and there is no evidence of any All‑In live show in Los Angeles during January 2022, the prediction that “The All-In podcast will do a live show in Los Angeles in January 2022” did not come true.

Available public sources don’t provide enough verifiable detail to determine whether both Chamath Palihapitiya and David Friedberg had newborn children within about a week of the Oct 23, 2021 episode.

What we can see:

• The very next All‑In episode (E53, published Oct 30, 2021) is summarized with a segment at 0:00 labeled “Bestie intro, child update, Joe Lonsdale’s take on paternity leave,” indicating at least some baby‑related news the following week but not specifying whose child(ren) or exact timing. (bilingualpodcastplayer.com)
• Biographical sources say Chamath has five children in total and that he later married Nathalie Dompé, with whom he has at least one or two children, but they do not give birth dates for those younger children, so we can’t tie any specific birth to late October 2021. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Public profiles of David Friedberg contain essentially no information about his children or their birth dates; his Wikipedia page’s “Personal life” section is silent on this. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Even community chatter among All‑In listeners only clearly mentions a Friedberg baby much later (a 2025 Reddit comment saying he “just had a baby”), which doesn’t establish anything about 2021. (reddit.com)

Because the births in question concern private family matters and are not documented with reliable, date‑specific public records or accessible transcripts, I cannot confirm whether both partners had given birth by “this time next week” after the Oct 23, 2021 episode. The prediction therefore cannot be confidently scored as right or wrong based on available evidence.