The All-In hosts made $750M while their followers lost 82%

Good morning.

The All-In Podcast hosts made an estimated $20-30 million from conferences alone. They personally cleared hundreds of millions from SPACs while their followers lost 82% on average.

But here's the kicker: if you'd followed their investment advice over five years, you would have underperformed a simple index fund while taking on way more risk.

This is what happens when media influence replaces investment discipline.

In today's newsletter:

Hey there,

Alberto here with this Tuesday's newsletter.

Today we're talking about something that matters if you're investing in private markets: the difference between influence and expertise.

And nobody illustrates this better than the All-In Podcast.

Between 2020 and 2025, the All-In hosts promoted 14 specific investments. If you'd put $1,000 into each one, your portfolio would have returned 11.2% annually.

Sounds decent until you realize QQQ (the Nasdaq-100 index fund) returned 16.8% over the same period.

You took more risk for worse returns. That's the opposite of what good investing looks like.

But here's where it gets interesting: strip out three consensus bets anyone could have made—Bitcoin, Tesla, and Robinhood—and the other 11 investments lost an average of 42%.

Six of Chamath's seven SPACs lost 82.3% on average. His followers got crushed while he personally made $750 million by selling at the peak.

The All-In Podcast claims they don't run ads and do it "for the love."

That's not true.

Their annual summit charges $7,500 per ticket. With roughly 2,000 attendees, that's $14.6 million for a single weekend event. They've run four of these.

But the real money isn't ticket sales. It's what the podcast does for their actual businesses.

Chamath used the platform to promote SPACs. Sacks got appointed as Trump's "AI & Crypto Czar" giving him regulatory authority over industries where he's personally invested. Friedberg promotes his own portfolio companies disguised as educational content.

The podcast is marketing. The audience is the product.

Here's why this matters for private market investors like you.

Influence doesn't equal expertise. Just because someone has a big platform doesn't mean they're making good investment decisions. The All-In hosts have massive reach, but their track record is objectively worse than buying an index fund.

Conflicts of interest are everywhere. When someone is promoting an investment, ask: are they buying or selling? Chamath pumped Virgin Galactic while serving as Chairman, then sold his entire stake at the peak. Retail investors who held lost 98.5%.

Risk-adjusted returns matter. The All-In portfolio had a Sharpe ratio of 0.13-0.22. QQQ's was 0.77. That means you got roughly 4x better risk-adjusted returns by ignoring them entirely.

At Founderscrowd, we don't promote investments we're exiting. We don't run $7,500 conferences. We don't hold regulatory positions over industries we invest in.

We do one thing: bring you vetted private market opportunities with honest analysis of what could go right and what could go wrong.

The All-In story is a reminder: when someone is selling you access, ask yourself who's really getting sold.

Founderscrowd Premium: Join hundreds of investors accessing weekly private market deals — early-stage startups, alternative assets, and secondaries in companies like SpaceX, Stripe, and OpenAI. Beta access is $40/month (normally $120). Apply here.