The ‘All-In’ Hosts Make the Leap from Investors to Influencers

On Friday, I published my long read on All-In, the podcast that half of Silicon Valley loves—and the other half loves to hate. The hosts, entrepreneurs and tech investors Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks, have successfully used the show to snatch back the mic from a critical press and, arguably, to distract from a less-than-impressive couple of years in their day jobs.

The four hosts used the podcast as “a way to get business, as a way to get deal flow, as a way to be recognized by [limited partners], as a way to build brand notoriety,” a person familiar with its production told me. This kind of shameless self-promotion used to be more or less unheard of in the venture capital industry. But the four All-In co-hosts came up in an era of sky-high valuations and an over-crowded field of VCs who had to find new ways to stand out. And this podcast, far more than efforts by VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz to subvert the media establishment with their own offerings, seems to have worked.