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THE MICROPHONE WENT TO WASHINGTON.

By Zimbo · October 31, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: David Sacks in six panels: Cape Town boy, giant suitcase, Memphis; Stanford, law, then consulting; PayPal IPO and eBay's $1.5B buy scatter the Mafia; Yammer out of Geni, Microsoft pays $1.2B; Craft and All-In; finale Sacks and Merv in a beaten-up car gaze at a Washington of microphones.
David Sacks was born in Cape Town, sold office chat to Microsoft, bankrolled startups at Craft, memed his way through All-In — then took the microphone to Washington. In six panels.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

David Sacks was born in Cape Town in 1972 and moved with his family to Tennessee at five. At Stanford he earned an economics degree in 1994 and co-founded the Stanford Review with Peter Thiel, then took a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1998 — and walked away from law for consulting, joining Confinity, the startup that became PayPal, in 1999.

At PayPal, Sacks was first product leader and then chief operating officer, steering the company through its February 2002 IPO and eBay's $1.5 billion acquisition that October. In 2008 he spun an internal chat tool built at his genealogy site Geni into Yammer, the “Facebook for the office,” which Microsoft bought for $1.2 billion in 2012; he co-founded Craft Ventures in 2017 and has co-hosted the All-In podcast since 2020, earning the nickname “Rain Man” for remembering every number.

In December 2024, President Donald Trump named Sacks the first White House AI and crypto czar. He served in that role into 2026 before moving to co-chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, while remaining a Craft general partner and All-In co-host.

The joke in Zimbo's strip is the long view: the man who sold office chat, bankrolled startups and memed his way through a podcast ends the strip at a mountain lookout, riding in a beaten-up car with Merv the beast beside him, gazing at a Washington where the Capitol dome wears podcast headphones and every building is a giant microphone. The kicker lands the arc in one line: he went to Washington, and the podcast came with him.

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