We're welcoming Bloomberg's Kate Clark to the show this week and diving into her reporting on the rough fundraising environment for any VC that isn't an a16z or GC-style megafund. The only emerging funds that can raise, it seems, are ones that are started by investors who leave these brands. If it weren't for the AI funding bonanza, the situation would look even worse.
We each make our predictions for how rosy or dreary the venture market will be 2 years from now. And, of course, take a moment to comment on Elon's DOGE departure.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro and welcome to Kate Clark
00:57 Emerging managers struggle to raise
14:34 The X factor, sovereign wealth
22:07 Venture market predictions
32:51 Elon Musk out in Washington
00:00:00
Welcome, everybody, to this week's Newcomer.
00:00:02
It's Tom Doughton here, joined by Eric, newcomer of Newcomer.
00:00:06
We got Madeline Renbarger and our special guest, Kate Clark,
00:00:10
my former colleague from The Information, joining us to talk
00:00:13
about a piece that she wrote at Bloomberg, where she now is.
00:00:16
Not the information we're we're trying to remind ourselves in
00:00:19
Bloomberg. We have three former information
00:00:21
people on the podcast. Information reunion over here.
00:00:25
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Kate, thank you so much
00:00:27
for joining us. Thanks.
00:00:28
For having me excited and. We're going to be talking about
00:00:31
this story that you wrote recently about the difficult
00:00:34
fundraising climate for venture capital firms.
00:00:37
The headline on the story is it's never been harder to make
00:00:40
it in venture capital, which is like a it's a stark message.
00:00:42
It's like a very firm, paternalistic thing to tell
00:00:45
people you're never going to make it, or if you do, you're
00:00:49
one of the luckies. I don't think it would have been
00:00:51
so extreme with maybe the the setup or the headline, but you
00:00:55
can see in the story that the data tells a very specific
00:00:58
story. It's quite grim.
00:00:59
It's less than $5 billion that these emerging managers, which
00:01:03
are people who have raised 3 or fewer funds in VC, like the
00:01:07
numbers are quite, quite bad. It's really low.
00:01:10
And for first timers, like people raising their first fund,
00:01:13
it was around a billion dollars and we're almost halfway through
00:01:15
the year. So I think that's why we sort of
00:01:17
went so harsh the headline and from chatting with so many
00:01:20
emerging managers, like it's really hard to raise a.
00:01:24
Fund it. It's so hard to capture failing
00:01:26
venture capital firms because they they sort of die slowly.
00:01:30
I mean, even in the story you're sort of talking to some of the
00:01:32
people who are kind of making it.
00:01:36
Who do we know for sure is you mentioned a couple that are like
00:01:40
actually calling it quits. This was something we were
00:01:43
challenged with, which is like, can we get current examples of
00:01:46
people who are considering or not considering quitting, but
00:01:50
like who is willing to talk about how incredibly difficult
00:01:54
and disappointing their fundraising process has been?
00:01:57
Like, as you might imagine, people don't really want to like
00:01:59
go on the record. There are a lot of conversations
00:02:01
that were had privately, but people don't really want to be
00:02:03
the face of this. So as you probably noticed and
00:02:06
others did like the picture we used for this article was people
00:02:09
who have success. A good firm, yeah, Chemistry,
00:02:12
right? No, I'm not.
00:02:14
But you mentioned like Foundry called it quits.
00:02:16
I think there was another one you mentioned.
00:02:18
Countdown Capital was a good example of like an emergency
00:02:21
manager that called it quits. Didn't open view shut down in
00:02:23
2023 or something There have been there's been a few high
00:02:25
profile ones that really shut down like publicly right versus,
00:02:29
you know, kind of twiddling away an.
00:02:31
Extreme situation where like a key man leaves and they had and
00:02:34
they like all of a sudden implode.
00:02:36
Like there are all these outliers that are examples of
00:02:39
this, but like didn't really speak true to the trend, which
00:02:41
the trend is like it's hard to fundraise.
00:02:43
People aren't actually able to do it.
00:02:44
And a lot of people are just like, quietly not succeeding.
00:02:48
Well, yeah, I wanted to zoom out and I, OK, I want to have you
00:02:51
on, you know, you're obviously sort of the expert on what's
00:02:54
happening in Venture and so you're seeing the same things as
00:02:56
us. Like narratively, it has been
00:02:58
such a complicated time because it's like if it hadn't been for
00:03:04
AI, we would have been clearly in a miserable downturn in
00:03:08
sharps and venture capital and then the the narrative would
00:03:10
have been clean. It's like everything's down.
00:03:13
Pandemic was the hype time. Like funds are pulling back.
00:03:17
Like everything's bad. But instead we had all this
00:03:20
excitement around AI hype or not, you know, tons of funding,
00:03:25
though some of the funding came from, you know, public companies
00:03:28
and crossover funds and everything.
00:03:30
But it, it was, it was a great moment to keep the the party
00:03:33
going in what otherwise would have been a brutal downturn.
00:03:38
So that's one complexifier. The other complexifier, of
00:03:41
course, is Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed
00:03:46
don't seem to have problems raising, even though it's a hard
00:03:49
time in venture capital. So yeah, why?
00:03:52
Why? I guess why are emerging
00:03:54
managers having a hard time when there is this sort of asset
00:03:59
class that's keeping momentum going and the mega funds are
00:04:03
keeping the lights on and raising larger funds?
00:04:05
Why do you think emerging managers are struggling?
00:04:08
I think it's just like a flight to quality or the limited
00:04:11
partners like the endowments or the OR just like the rich people
00:04:15
in the family offices. They in times like this where
00:04:18
it's so uncertain and so volatile and you know, you have
00:04:20
such an unpredictable president and all of these factors, you
00:04:23
want to pile your money and just if you can get access into
00:04:26
Sequoia, are founders fun or entries in because they have a
00:04:29
track record of, you know, 10/20/30, in some cases 40-50
00:04:34
years. And so it feels safe and it
00:04:35
feels comfortable, to be clear, like it was always hard for
00:04:38
emerging managers. So it's just like extra, extra
00:04:41
hard now. And because of that, I think
00:04:43
it's really just about reputation.
00:04:45
And that's why you do have chemistry, which is the fun we
00:04:48
talked about. That is the outlier that very
00:04:51
quickly raised 300 ish million for their debut fund.
00:04:54
It's because all these people come from those name brand
00:04:58
firms, so they have the perfect recipe that LP is excited about.
00:05:02
We were talking about like Dimension Capital last week
00:05:04
where it's like 2 of them are from Lux, one I think from
00:05:07
Obvious. You know why I'm asking you the
00:05:10
questions I can't answer. So they're not easy.
00:05:12
But why do you think it is the case that there's this narrative
00:05:16
that, oh, you can spin out of the legacy funds and there was
00:05:21
like, oh, you wanna be a founder or you wanna have been a great
00:05:24
Angel investor? And like we had this real Locky
00:05:27
grooms and the solo founder and a lot obviously still going
00:05:30
strong and not Friedman and Daniel Gross.
00:05:33
I mean, that's basically a firm at this point.
00:05:35
But anyway, what? Why is it the case that now the
00:05:38
narrative is you need to be spinning out of a big venture
00:05:43
capital firm to raise? Yeah, I do think that there's
00:05:46
momentum for spin outs, which like, so people coming out of
00:05:50
these big funds, I think it's the same reason like they have
00:05:53
on their on their resume, they spent five years there.
00:05:55
So LP's feel like, oh, they know how to do their job.
00:05:58
They have relationships. Like it's, I think it's the same
00:06:01
as why people feel like they need to do a stint at like big
00:06:03
tech company because you get that good experience and you
00:06:05
build your work. Like I don't think you really to
00:06:08
be a good investor, you obviously do not need to work at
00:06:10
those firms. And actually a lot of people
00:06:12
leave those firms because they don't feel like they're getting
00:06:14
any good experience or like actually hands on with founders.
00:06:17
But I think it's the perception LP's have, which is that they
00:06:21
know what they're doing, they have the right relationships and
00:06:24
like, especially if they get support from the GPS and the
00:06:27
fund, like the fund invest, that really, really helps.
00:06:29
If you were to look back at the last decade or so of startup and
00:06:34
venture capital, and I've been thinking about this a lot
00:06:36
because a friend of mine is writing a book about kind of the
00:06:38
the Zerp era. And what would you say was the
00:06:42
peak? What what would you say was the
00:06:43
moment in which the getting was so good that you could launch
00:06:47
these as an emerging manager? You know, raise the LP funding,
00:06:51
get maybe fifty $100 million fund off the ground fairly
00:06:53
quickly and get a return such that like you suddenly were in
00:06:57
the game, even though you weren't a major player, you
00:06:59
weren't a name brand, you didn't have maybe the deal flow of like
00:07:02
a top tier firm. Like what?
00:07:03
What era would you kind of pinpoint as like the height?
00:07:06
Probably 2021, I mean like maybe 2020, like there was a period
00:07:10
Eric, maybe you remember like when did like Brianne Kimmel and
00:07:13
Locky Groom kind of like raise their?
00:07:15
First, well there was certified. That was.
00:07:17
There was the pandemic fake out, right?
00:07:19
It felt like things were as crazy as they ever could have
00:07:22
been almost what like 20-19 and I think locking and people were
00:07:27
coming on earlier than the pandemic.
00:07:30
But then it's like things we get scared and like people pull back
00:07:35
because it's like, oh, the pandemic's gonna be terrible for
00:07:37
the economy. And then everyone realizes, oh,
00:07:39
actually it's gonna tank interest rates.
00:07:42
So it'll be great for forward-looking investments.
00:07:44
Like tech. Everybody's gonna be sitting at
00:07:46
home so money can move much faster and everything,
00:07:49
everybody's gonna be shifting to software.
00:07:51
So all of a sudden all the tech stuff is gonna do really well.
00:07:54
And so then it was like true mania, you know, I was, I mean,
00:07:58
it was just insane period of time.
00:08:00
Anyone could raise money. I mean, there was just a period
00:08:02
where like if you worked at any startup, didn't matter what it
00:08:05
was, you could like quit and raise $7 in like a
00:08:09
month. It's what it felt like.
00:08:10
I mean, it was ridiculous. And most of those people don't
00:08:13
still even have funds. I think that that kind of like
00:08:16
that chapter was short lived, but like it was absurdly easy.
00:08:20
And a lot of those people also invested in stuff that got
00:08:22
marked up way too high, was overvalued and like they they
00:08:25
don't have good returns at all. So I think that's why they're no
00:08:28
longer. One thing that's amazing to me
00:08:30
is like in 2021, I mean, I I was saying like, this is wild.
00:08:33
The party's crazy. Like I literally had stories
00:08:35
like Emperor has no clothes sort of situation.
00:08:38
But at the same time, there was the belief that like all the
00:08:42
exits that were happening in 2021, they were sort of the fake
00:08:46
exits. You know, it's like, oh, these
00:08:48
are like the SPAC companies and the shitty ones that everyone's
00:08:52
unloading. And the real exits, they should
00:08:54
come like next year when the party keeps going.
00:08:58
And then the market corrected at the end of the year and it was
00:09:00
like, OK, that's not happening. You know, what's your view on
00:09:04
like the fact that maybe we'll see, you know, trimes coming?
00:09:08
You know, we just had gusto on stage at breaking the bank.
00:09:11
Obviously, Stripe and SpaceX and everybody are sort of
00:09:15
perpetually private. Like where were the exits that
00:09:18
would have kept Venture and better standing with limited
00:09:21
partners? That's the source of the crisis.
00:09:24
Like there are no exits and it's funny when you see like 2 IPOs
00:09:28
like there was 1. What was it Hinge Health last
00:09:31
week? Yeah, Hinge Health went out last
00:09:33
week and then yeah. And then Omada is looking to go
00:09:36
out, maybe next week, Yeah. Right.
00:09:38
And people get so excited and they're like see like IPO's.
00:09:40
But that's not that does not solve this problem, which is
00:09:43
that there are like hundreds of companies that are overdue to
00:09:45
exit, whether it's MNA or IPO and it's not happening.
00:09:48
So until that changes like this crisis for emerging managers and
00:09:52
and established ones who are struggling isn't, isn't going
00:09:54
away. But I don't know what you guys
00:09:56
are hearing, but it doesn't seem to me like any of those things
00:09:58
are expected to pick up dramatically anytime soon.
00:10:01
I mean, there's been a little bit here and there and like hint
00:10:03
health, but like, it feels like it's still quite stagnant.
00:10:06
Right, I mean whiz was huge this Johnny I've thing is OK Tom
00:10:09
weigh in on this. This is sidebar is the Johnny
00:10:12
I've deal like a huge it's $6.5 billion like on paper that
00:10:16
should be a like transformational.
00:10:19
Yeah, Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Kate.
00:10:21
It's a stock deal. No one knows how the.
00:10:23
Yeah, we don't know how the open AI story is going to end up.
00:10:26
I mean, they haven't even converted to being a profit
00:10:28
company, but. I'm saying they could be a
00:10:30
liquidity provider. Forget the investment returns
00:10:32
from investing in open AI, they just acquire everybody and like.
00:10:36
If they do it with cash, we can start to talk.
00:10:38
But like if you're an LP and you're ending up with like
00:10:40
essentially a profit participation unit from Open AI
00:10:43
right now with the hope that it becomes a reasonable semi liquid
00:10:46
stock, then sure, we can, we can have that conversation, but.
00:10:49
Johnny, I've like incredibly more rich.
00:10:52
I don't think that it put a lot of cash in the hands of venture
00:10:54
capital firms. Yeah, I don't know the cap table
00:10:56
didn't. The information had something I
00:10:58
didn't dig into. It I'm usually guessing, but I'm
00:11:00
pretty, I would imagine that he owned a majority of it and like
00:11:02
I know they were a little bit investment, yeah, they'd done,
00:11:04
but I don't think it was a ton. Yeah, it's certainly not going
00:11:07
to be like a windfall for, you know, the early investors that
00:11:09
backed just him, right? One question I had, Kate, to
00:11:13
jump back a little bit. There's, you know, the
00:11:15
conversation around the big guys getting bigger, but there was
00:11:17
also this huge push around like seed funding really taking off
00:11:21
that kind of was more resistant to the downturn and seed sort of
00:11:25
continued to go. People wanted to back, you know,
00:11:27
why see companies. That was a sector that had a
00:11:29
little more resilience where kind of are the earlier funds
00:11:33
like that, where of course the middle funds and someone who's
00:11:35
trying to raise, you know, like a 500 million to a billion
00:11:38
dollar fund are really struggling.
00:11:40
Is it the same for the really early people or is there a
00:11:42
little bit more breathing room there?
00:11:44
Yeah. Like you'd think that if you're
00:11:45
raising a small seed fund, it would be a lot easier than
00:11:48
raising a mega fund. And I think that like the
00:11:51
challenge is a lot of LP's have a minimum check size.
00:11:54
And so actually they want to invest in funds that are like
00:11:56
250 million or more. When those funds are smaller
00:11:59
than that, like you can't be an endowment like writing a $1
00:12:02
million check. Like it doesn't make sense for
00:12:04
the time it takes to diligence a fund.
00:12:05
So I guess what I'm saying is that it's still hard.
00:12:08
I don't know specifically. About like, I think like a funny
00:12:10
thing that I would say on this is like seed is expensive and
00:12:13
competitive, which would make it seem like I guess it's a good
00:12:17
time to be in seed, you know, or it's like it's crowded.
00:12:20
But like obviously some of that is from the mega funds and the
00:12:23
multi stage funds participating in SEED as like an option call.
00:12:27
And I think a lot of the pure SEED investors feel like it's
00:12:30
overpriced. So it's this weird moment where
00:12:33
SEED is comparatively hot relative to the other rounds,
00:12:37
but few people in SEED feel like, oh, it's a great time to
00:12:41
be a SEED investor. That's always the case though.
00:12:43
Like I, I remember writing a story exactly about this and
00:12:46
when I was a TechCrunch and I think like this narrative is
00:12:48
always there where it's like the big guys are taking all the
00:12:50
deals and they're marking everything up and it's so hard
00:12:52
to be in seed. I just think it's always the
00:12:54
case. It's like the big funds do all
00:12:56
we. Want.
00:12:57
Yeah, everyone complaints that the big funds are jumping into
00:13:00
demo day and pricing up all the like buzziest.
00:13:03
YC route yeah, we're about to have AY combinator demo day.
00:13:05
Exactly. We're heating up for the YC
00:13:08
companies are overpriced narrative just now.
00:13:12
Everyone starts texting me frustrated messages about this
00:13:15
is ridiculous, Yeah. There's always drama.
00:13:19
Kate, did you see as you were talking to people for this
00:13:21
story, a particular asset class that got cold feet around tech
00:13:24
and being an LP? I mean, the endowments are still
00:13:27
probably the single largest across the board backer of these
00:13:30
funds. I doubt that's going to change
00:13:32
anytime soon. But like was there at the at the
00:13:35
boom time a certain type of, you know, unlikely investor or LP
00:13:39
that was starting to, you know, back these funds then as things
00:13:43
started to turn just completely disappeared.
00:13:45
The high net worth individuals are usually the first to kind of
00:13:47
step back just because they had a lot of exposure to the public
00:13:50
markets. But I mean, the endowments like
00:13:52
this is a really unique time. Like the Harvard is at war with
00:13:55
Trump right now. And while I'm not saying that
00:13:58
directly relates to Harvard's venture capital fund investments
00:14:01
like it makes them more. No, people are nervous about the
00:14:04
endowments pulling back like that's going to a huge trickle
00:14:08
down effect. I have definitely heard about
00:14:10
several endowments adjusting their allocation.
00:14:12
So doing less, not doing none, but doing less.
00:14:16
And that has like he just said, that has huge impacts to the
00:14:19
ecosystem. So I would it's a kind of the
00:14:21
same thing as this as we're talking about earlier, like it's
00:14:24
really hard to point to specific examples with this stuff because
00:14:27
it's all so hush, hush behind closed doors and there's no
00:14:30
proof. But like I think we can expect
00:14:32
that a lot of endowments will do a lot less.
00:14:35
The big X Factor and everybody's still trying to understand this.
00:14:38
We just saw the sort of everybody goes to the Middle
00:14:41
East thing, You know, Tim Cook's getting shit on for not going.
00:14:45
But it's like, does sovereign wealth of various forms come and
00:14:49
save everybody? Endowments and, you know, fund
00:14:52
of funds in the US are seen as the rational investors.
00:14:56
Does sovereign wealth come in and like, who cares about
00:14:58
returns and give everybody money?
00:15:02
I find it so hard to like, you know, yeah, it's like, oh, the
00:15:05
funds that do well will get their, you know, rewards and the
00:15:08
ones that don't will get their just desserts.
00:15:10
When it feels like you have sovereign wealth, sort of
00:15:13
investing for relationships and not, you know, non financial
00:15:17
reasons, it's like hard to tell a sort of, I don't know,
00:15:21
morality play around a venture performance or how do you how do
00:15:24
you think about? That I don't think sovereign
00:15:26
wealth is coming and saving firms.
00:15:28
I really, I don't I think there's been this narrative for
00:15:30
a long time that it's dumb money.
00:15:31
And I do think that that has changed and people have realized
00:15:35
that obviously there's, there's dumb people everywhere and
00:15:38
that's, that's correct. But like people have realized
00:15:41
that it takes years to develop those relationships.
00:15:44
It's a really long process. You can't call them and be like
00:15:47
I'm struggling to raise. Harvard's out.
00:15:49
Come in, Piff or whatever. Yeah, exactly right.
00:15:52
And actually, like a lot of those, those sovereign wealth
00:15:55
funds have made their bets. And there was that period which
00:15:57
we all wrote about, which was like 2 years or something where
00:16:00
everybody was going to Saudi Arabia all the time.
00:16:02
And I think people are still going.
00:16:04
But I think that a lot of those sovereign wealth funds did like
00:16:07
spent the time, then made some investments and like now a lot
00:16:10
of them want to invest directly in like the LLMS and other AI
00:16:13
companies. Right.
00:16:14
Like, you know, they're, they're starting to back, you know, the
00:16:16
companies themselves, they don't need to go through the VCs.
00:16:19
Yeah. Right.
00:16:20
I had an interesting conversation with someone about
00:16:22
that recently and asking about, you know, sovereigns as LP's.
00:16:26
And this was someone who is a VC in in the Middle East and
00:16:28
they're like, you know, venture capital's not that important of
00:16:30
an asset class. I know we think about it as an
00:16:33
incredibly important thing. And it's part of this cool, you
00:16:35
know, sector of the American economy and it's the new, you
00:16:38
know, next generation of companies.
00:16:39
It's relatively small compared to private equity, compared to
00:16:42
the other things that sovereigns invest in, like buying ports or
00:16:45
sports stadiums or teams or things like that.
00:16:48
And so yeah, I'm interested to see maybe you've heard a bit
00:16:52
about like if it's just like you kind of don't really rate as as
00:16:56
AVC firm if you go to the Middle East and hold out your hat and
00:16:58
expect them to just put money. But isn't that, to me, that's
00:17:01
the opposite. It's like Venture is so small
00:17:03
that like they they can save it if they think it's an
00:17:06
interesting space with people they want to hobnob with.
00:17:09
Or I don't know, Kate, what do you think?
00:17:10
If a fund needs saving, you don't want to invest.
00:17:13
Yeah, it's not cool. Yeah.
00:17:15
Right, nearly they're not good enough and they I don't think
00:17:17
the sovereign wealth funds would want to do that.
00:17:20
And I my guess is like that a most sovereign wealth funds are
00:17:22
not interested in emerging funds at all.
00:17:24
They're interested in like entries in which.
00:17:28
Right where they can write huge checks, yeah.
00:17:30
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's really important, so.
00:17:32
Yeah, they're not. They're not like, oh, I'm going
00:17:34
to be the anchor LP for this $30 million seed fund, you know?
00:17:37
I, I mean, founders are founders of the lifeblood of Silicon
00:17:40
Valley. But after that, emerging
00:17:42
managers are, you know, a core part of the ethos.
00:17:45
I, I did see Hex data analysis company with a cool CEO Barry,
00:17:52
he raised from a new her new fund.
00:17:54
I thought that was an interesting like, I feel like
00:17:56
the founders who know, you know, will be like, OK, you're going
00:18:01
off on your own. You're sort of an emerging
00:18:03
manager. I have a good reputation.
00:18:05
You have a good reputation. I don't need like the big brand.
00:18:08
I feel like that's Silicon Valley at its best.
00:18:10
When like the sort of person really matters and it's like
00:18:14
they can be off on their own or at the big firm.
00:18:17
It doesn't matter to me. It's.
00:18:18
Certainly a huge calling card if you know, Elod Gill is on your
00:18:21
cap table or Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, which I know we've
00:18:23
talked about, are actually quite larger than, you know, just solo
00:18:26
and Angel investors. But it does seem like there
00:18:29
still are these personalities that can sort of command this
00:18:31
and have sort of this kind of upstart feel.
00:18:34
Do like them a lot, like Eric was saying, like founders are
00:18:36
drawn to that. And also I think in this
00:18:39
environment, people really like it when somebody runs the fund
00:18:42
because there's been so much personnel changes at these VC
00:18:46
firms. And it's like either you could
00:18:48
like go into business with Sarah Guo, who like clearly is calling
00:18:50
the shots or fund, or you could like definitely AGP at
00:18:54
Andreessen, who? She's dominant.
00:18:55
Like that's a that's a fund that's crushing it, right?
00:18:58
I mean, it's a fairly new fund. When we look at what companies
00:19:01
we wanted through Bowl Valley, I feel like convictions and
00:19:03
everything, yeah, so many of them.
00:19:05
But if the narrative is like, OK, it's the bad time to be an
00:19:10
emerging manager, relatively better time to be in a big fund.
00:19:14
Does that mean that we're swinging back to a time where
00:19:17
like brand carries the day? Or do you think, you know, if
00:19:21
you're doing a deal with Andreessen, most founders who
00:19:23
are savvy still care about like the particular person Or how
00:19:27
much do you think it's like I'm looking to raise money from
00:19:30
General Catalyst, Andreessen or it's like I'm looking to raise
00:19:33
money from, you know, David or whatever?
00:19:36
Andrew, I'm curious. What you think?
00:19:37
But I think when it comes to the mega funds, it's not really
00:19:40
about the people. And I don't obviously if it's
00:19:43
Marc Andreessen or if it's and there's a few of there's a few
00:19:45
people that like really matter I guess and at those firms.
00:19:48
But like that's one thing. But I do think generally when
00:19:51
you're raising from those. Right.
00:19:53
You're raising from the platform.
00:19:54
Yeah. Like you're raising the platform
00:19:56
and that's a signal that you look that you wanted because
00:19:58
you, because your customers might know those firms, whereas
00:20:01
they might not know like conviction.
00:20:03
Do you agree? Do you think like those GPS of
00:20:05
those firms are really known enough that they carry that?
00:20:08
I mean, I think if, you know, founders are asking for my
00:20:10
opinion, which is what it is like I would want a partner
00:20:14
where it's like, I like that partner.
00:20:16
I trust them and I believe that they have pull within their
00:20:18
firms. But I agree that often when you
00:20:22
get, you know, one of these huge firms backing you, the appeal is
00:20:25
like they have whole teams, they have a lot more money.
00:20:28
They could potentially like follow on and, you know, and
00:20:31
there are cases where it's like firms keep coming back round
00:20:35
after round and like are useful and bring connections and but
00:20:40
but then it is like I'm, I'm thinking of particular examples
00:20:43
that I don't want to name. And it's like, I don't know,
00:20:45
like the loyalty of the particular partner can matter a
00:20:48
lot. It's like, does that partner and
00:20:50
your board member actually like drive bringing the money back or
00:20:54
not? Yeah.
00:20:55
I mean it just depends on the founder and what they want
00:20:57
because most founders like don't really want the VC to like
00:21:00
actually do anything. Sure, we want them to be a
00:21:03
capital allocator, but that's. Important.
00:21:06
They don't really the rest of it's kind of annoying and but
00:21:08
there are some founders who like maybe just really do need
00:21:11
support in various areas and like that's cool.
00:21:13
But I do think most founders I talk to like they don't care
00:21:16
about any of the stuff we're talking about at all.
00:21:18
They just care about whether they can raise money or not.
00:21:21
They want signal, right? I mean, you or you think most
00:21:24
founders are just like price optimizers?
00:21:27
I think there's still signal. Yeah, I think so.
00:21:30
But I just mean, they usually just don't care about kind of
00:21:33
the particulars, let's say, the politics of a certain firm.
00:21:37
There's been controversies with Andreessen, right?
00:21:38
Over the years. When I've asked founders about
00:21:42
that in the portfolio, they're like, huh?
00:21:45
Yeah, right. Well, they never care about.
00:21:46
Yeah, the little controversies that less reporters care about.
00:21:49
You're like, what? They're in hot water for XYZ.
00:21:53
It's like, oh, do they have a lot of money?
00:21:54
And like do they do a lot of stuff like?
00:21:56
Yeah. But yeah, the signal matters.
00:21:58
I agree. The signal definitely matters.
00:21:59
And that's why that's why you go into business with some of these
00:22:01
funds because they will follow on and they will help you get
00:22:03
customers. But but yeah, I just think
00:22:05
overall it's kind of like founders don't really.
00:22:07
Let's make a prediction about where we'll be in two years.
00:22:13
I mean, I guess to me, it really comes down to the thing that you
00:22:16
were getting AT and the whole point of all of this, which is
00:22:19
exits, right? Like if there are exits, then
00:22:22
there, there can be a persistence of, you know, this
00:22:25
landscape or, or, or, or ecosystem of VC firms of like,
00:22:28
you know, mid tier VC firms. And if there aren't, then
00:22:30
they're going to die off. And I, you know, I hear the
00:22:34
argument from time to time that like, oh, you know, private
00:22:37
sales and things like that will give people liquidity.
00:22:41
So you don't really need an IPO. But that's not really the
00:22:43
outcome I imagine most founders and most employees wanted when
00:22:46
they got into a company, certainly not as AVC is, you
00:22:49
know, basically selling off to someone else.
00:22:52
I think it's going to be rough if we don't see IPOs and I, I, I
00:22:58
think it probably will continue to decline.
00:23:00
Private tech you think is will be in decline in two years?
00:23:03
I think so. I feel pretty confident saying
00:23:05
that and with the caveat that maybe AI can pull a rabbit out
00:23:10
of the hat and create, you know, this next wave of Internet, new
00:23:14
platform, whatever you want to call it, that would create a
00:23:16
whole ecosystem and, and, and new, you know, revenue streams
00:23:20
and companies that can kind of live off of that.
00:23:21
But absent that, I don't see why it wouldn't decline.
00:23:24
Going up, Tom's like it may not be as much in decline as he
00:23:27
thinks just because like companies are already developing
00:23:29
all this infrastructure around tender offers and it's becoming
00:23:32
the norm. And I think that will just be
00:23:35
what everyone does if the markets really do continue in
00:23:39
the direction they've been going on because opposite of a
00:23:41
prediction. But like, I don't think we're
00:23:42
going to have some major AI IPO in the next two years.
00:23:45
Like that doesn't seem at all where we're headed at this
00:23:49
point. So I don't think they'll be that
00:23:51
liquidity. So as a result, what I do think
00:23:53
will happen is tender offers will be the norm at every single
00:23:55
company. And that's how you cash people
00:23:57
out. That's how you cash out
00:23:58
investors and employees and you keep people happy as long as the
00:24:01
markets continue to be this frozen as far as IP OS.
00:24:05
But why would you throw good money after bad because someone
00:24:08
has to hold these? You know someone has to hold the
00:24:09
bag for a tender offer, right? I mean, there's like outside
00:24:12
capital coming in buying these shares don't at some point you
00:24:15
would think, well, I don't want to buy at this price.
00:24:18
I don't think I'm going to end up with a good return if I were
00:24:20
to buy these shares. Yeah, I mean the secondary
00:24:22
market, you know, trades down and people react to valuation.
00:24:26
Madeline, you want to make a prediction?
00:24:28
Yeah, I have a prediction. I think we're going to see
00:24:31
another one of the sort of like second tier of the mega funds,
00:24:36
like not quite the GC Andreessen size, but like ones that are
00:24:41
kind of playing in that space like a Thrive.
00:24:43
I think we're going to have a new one that will sort of enter
00:24:46
the Canon of like mega fund doing other financial products
00:24:50
besides BC. I mean, Thrive is already doing
00:24:52
this. So my money is that it's going
00:24:53
to be Thrive. But I do see like with the big
00:24:55
guys getting bigger, I think there's going to be another firm
00:24:58
that gets like like solidified and sort of like that banner
00:25:01
doing something else in venture that's not just like traditional
00:25:04
venture. Like Founders fund could if they
00:25:06
want it it feels like. Founders fund always could they
00:25:09
have amazing returns, but I feel like they don't want to do that
00:25:13
in the same way that would be, you know, like to consensus for
00:25:15
them. And they've traditionally Peter
00:25:17
has just done, you know, separate firms if you wanted to
00:25:20
do other strategies. Madeline, I think that's an
00:25:23
interesting prediction now, anyway, Kate, any prediction?
00:25:26
I mean, I think that we will see a lot of these mega funds, even
00:25:30
though yes, they're doing well and they can raise money, I
00:25:32
think they'll get a lot more creative about who the LP's are.
00:25:35
Well, not creative. I think basically what I what
00:25:38
will happen is a lot more of these firms will pursue like
00:25:40
public pension funds, things like that they've avoided
00:25:43
because that makes their returns public, which is great for us
00:25:45
because then we can actually see how they're doing.
00:25:48
But I think we'll start to. See return bonanza.
00:25:50
They're getting out anyway. They're already going to, you
00:25:52
know, bankers and getting them sent to every wealthy individual
00:25:55
in the world. Yeah, right.
00:25:56
Yes, exactly. But that shows you that that
00:25:58
it's a lot harder. So I think we'll just see kind
00:26:00
of like them seek out other types of limited burgers.
00:26:03
Yeah, I'm bullish overall. I feel like I I disagree with
00:26:08
Tom just in that like I feel like every sign is the
00:26:11
technology remains core to what's happening in in our
00:26:16
economy. Like I think there's a lot of
00:26:18
value to be extracted from generative AII think the core
00:26:22
themes are doing well. So to me that just means like
00:26:27
this stuff will get sorted out. Stripe, SpaceX, solid companies
00:26:33
generating in some cases profits, like maybe they're
00:26:36
priced off like 1020%, but not in a way that's an existential
00:26:41
crisis. I think clearly there are a lot
00:26:44
of like software SAS investments that like are never coming
00:26:48
through. And like, I feel like the
00:26:50
biggest risk factor is just the sort of like, I don't know, $2
00:26:54
billion Unicorn. Like how much does your fund
00:26:57
hang on this like startup that was valued super highly in 2021?
00:27:01
Like those people, they haven't like stomach the loss yet are
00:27:05
clearly in trouble. But hopefully you know, you you
00:27:08
load into open AI at the right time or you figured out some AI
00:27:12
investment and you make it to the next wave or you didn't.
00:27:15
But I feel like this wave is good, but it it killed a lot of
00:27:19
the old guard. But overall, I think I'm I'm
00:27:21
still bullish just on a pure like this thing lives or dies
00:27:26
based on the actual promise of the underlying technology.
00:27:29
And there's a lot of exciting stuff coming out of generative
00:27:32
AI. That's great news for a
00:27:33
newcomer. It's great news for Cerebral
00:27:38
Valley. Yeah, hey, you're naughty.
00:27:40
And what is your take or like do you just you agree with that or
00:27:43
not? I don't like think about it
00:27:44
like, oh, I'm optimistic or pessimistic, but I just think
00:27:46
that there will continue to be a lot of funding to private
00:27:49
companies. So I agree more with you in that
00:27:51
and that I don't think that in two years there's going to be
00:27:54
some massive depression for startups.
00:27:55
Like I think things will continue to be.
00:27:58
There'll be a ton of activity as long as this AI boom stretches
00:28:01
on. Like maybe unless something like
00:28:04
open AI or anthropic like implodes.
00:28:08
Right. It would need to be like
00:28:10
existential. Yeah, it would need to be like
00:28:12
what would. I think change things, but I, I
00:28:14
don't think that's gonna happen. We already got close enough with
00:28:17
the Sam Altman saga, what, two years ago at this point or?
00:28:20
Almost two years. Two years in October.
00:28:22
November. And Tom, I mean, you did this
00:28:24
story basically we're saying this whole hype cycle is
00:28:26
predicated on like foundation models, like not collapsing.
00:28:30
And you did a story like soon after starting to write for us.
00:28:32
There's like, actually, yeah, there's some revenue there.
00:28:35
They're not. It's not so ridiculous or like.
00:28:39
No, I'm not. I'm not.
00:28:40
If you, if you recall my argument, my argument was like,
00:28:43
yes, if AI continues on its trajectory, not even continues
00:28:47
on it, they have major financial structural problems.
00:28:49
Anthropic burns billions of dollars a year.
00:28:52
Open AI burns billions of dollars a year.
00:28:53
I understand these companies are too big to fail right now and
00:28:56
they can probably continue to raise money increasingly from
00:28:58
sovereigns to persist. These aren't great businesses
00:29:01
right now. Like we can talk about their
00:29:02
revenue and the potential impact that they have on society, but
00:29:05
like, let's get these fucking books together like every other
00:29:09
industry would look at the burn rate and I used to.
00:29:11
Be I learned this whole thing covering Uber and it was like
00:29:14
they burn so much, they burn so much, they burn so much.
00:29:16
I mean, this is just how startups do things, right?
00:29:19
I know this before. We've seen the movie before when
00:29:22
you were asking about what was the peak period for fundraising
00:29:25
or something like, my mind immediately went to the scooter
00:29:27
era, which is like. Oh my gosh, I haven't thought
00:29:31
about the scooter era in years. That's like that was when I was
00:29:34
really first starting out reporting.
00:29:35
So like I always think about that because I remember being so
00:29:39
every day my mind was being blown by these valuations.
00:29:41
I mean you guys remember like ofo.
00:29:44
Ofo. Yeah, that was the housing 1
00:29:46
ofo. Like it?
00:29:47
Was. Just crazy.
00:29:48
And since then we've had multiple.
00:29:51
And that was like transparently insane.
00:29:53
I don't know. I know like Rulov and people
00:29:55
believed in it, but it's like it didn't make any sense to me.
00:29:59
Like, I mean, the risk with models which we we've talked
00:30:02
about endlessly, is that like when they're cheap to deliver or
00:30:06
do you no longer have a Moat? And therefore if it's cheap to
00:30:09
deliver and you can make a lot of profit, everybody has it and
00:30:11
therefore you're not differentiated.
00:30:13
That, that to me is the like terrifying case for open AI that
00:30:17
it's either really expensive to deliver, you don't make money
00:30:20
because you're differentiated or it's cheap to deliver and you're
00:30:23
not differentiated. But.
00:30:25
I I want to be clear, I'm not on like the full extreme side of
00:30:27
like the EDD Citrons of the world who think that these are
00:30:31
full on, you know, House of Cards that are about to
00:30:33
collapse. I think they have much more
00:30:35
value than its critics would be willing to accept.
00:30:37
I just think it's a major structural problem that we
00:30:39
really haven't seen at this scale before.
00:30:41
And you know, I also like I covered Netflix and I worked
00:30:44
with a certain editor who I'm not going to name you, but we
00:30:46
all work with him too. Who?
00:30:48
Who made his career, not his career.
00:30:50
He's done a lot of career things, but but a huge rallying
00:30:53
cry of his was like this Netflix thing.
00:30:56
It's not going to work out. Right, right.
00:30:58
And not only did it work out for them, they figured it out sooner
00:31:01
than the traditionals. Yeah, exactly right.
00:31:04
Everybody else is wrong. Right, they figured out sooner
00:31:06
and they got their books right faster and the the you know, the
00:31:08
media companies that all jumped on afterwards ended up having to
00:31:11
burn a huge yeah, anyway, total catastrophe.
00:31:14
So we we've all seen it before, but this is tough.
00:31:17
I I really think open AI is is it's not going to be an easy
00:31:20
road to figure it out and we should be skeptical of it until
00:31:23
they do. But I agree with you.
00:31:25
Look, if these companies do end up becoming trillion dollar, you
00:31:29
know, you know, entities as Sam Altman and apparently, as the
00:31:31
Wall Street Journal reported, expects, you know, just their
00:31:33
hardware division to be, then sure, it's going to be a
00:31:37
financial bonanza for the industry.
00:31:38
If you can create a new trillion dollar company, all bets are
00:31:41
off. But absent that man, it's just
00:31:43
everything that you wrote about Kate and you know, the software
00:31:45
companies and things like that, It's just it's not going to be
00:31:48
easy. And maybe to close off this part
00:31:50
of it, like I'm sure all of our sources have told us in the
00:31:53
past, like expect a die off. You know, there's going to be
00:31:56
some sort of reverse Cambrian explosion in the next year or so
00:31:59
where we see all these firms that raised in 2020-2021 aren't
00:32:03
going to be able to make it and it hasn't happened yet, so.
00:32:06
I know we're into like Year 5 of this at this point.
00:32:09
It's. Not going to happen.
00:32:10
It'll never be all at once like we like.
00:32:11
It to me, right? The media's reputation is that
00:32:14
like, we love to write about failure, but we hate to write
00:32:16
about like slow failure. And you know, like a lot of
00:32:20
these funds and a lot of these companies, they're dying very
00:32:23
slowly. And by the time they really die,
00:32:25
who cares about them anymore? And so honestly, it's like a lot
00:32:29
of things just fade into non being.
00:32:32
And unless you die in a splashy way, it doesn't sort of
00:32:36
penetrate the narrative in quite the same way.
00:32:38
Yeah, and usually if you die in a splashy way, you get to start
00:32:40
a new company anyway, so. You can make your death splashy.
00:32:44
Then you're like, oh, yeah, this person knows how to stay in the
00:32:46
headlines. Like, let's give them another
00:32:47
shot. Adam Newman, back at it.
00:32:49
I was adopted to stay a shout out blow.
00:32:52
All right, I wanted to end Elon Musk.
00:32:55
Is is walking away from Doge something we've talked about
00:33:00
fairly extensively on the podcast?
00:33:02
Can we like queue up that Remember on American Idol when
00:33:05
they would kick people off and they would play a bad day like
00:33:08
Daniel Powder bad day? Stay you stayed the montage.
00:33:12
Can someone make the edit real quick?
00:33:14
The montage of Elon walking out of his little little fake office
00:33:16
in the White House. Yeah.
00:33:19
I mean, look, it's his. His time as a special government
00:33:21
employee seems to be ending, but not before he seems to be
00:33:26
shitting on everyone on the way out the door, including the big
00:33:28
beautiful bill, and saying that it it defies everything that he
00:33:32
was working for in Doge. Which is really an easy way to
00:33:35
say that Doge failed and he can just blame it on the big
00:33:38
beautiful bill. The media played an interesting
00:33:41
role in all of this. And I not to make everything,
00:33:44
you know, through the lens of how we write about stuff, but
00:33:46
there was a lot of triumphalism I saw on the tech crowd after
00:33:50
Trump won, basically saying the traditional media is dead
00:33:53
because Trump, who was abhorred by, you know, mainstream media,
00:33:58
was able to succeed. And you have all of these
00:34:00
whatever you want to talk about. You give your example of what
00:34:03
you think new media is podcast, let's say, winning that
00:34:06
traditional media died. And of course you saw, you know,
00:34:08
with the New York Times and, and the journal and everyone Wired
00:34:11
in particular was really just bagging on doge throughout.
00:34:14
It's it's time to a point that it was, you know, Elon lost huge
00:34:17
amounts of credibility and, and, and approval ratings and all
00:34:20
that stuff. I'm interested to see how as we
00:34:23
kind of start to accept the fact that DOGE was a failure as it
00:34:27
it's significant dwindles in Washington and Elon goes back to
00:34:30
the private sector who the blame will be on for for Doge's.
00:34:34
Failure. In some ways it sounds like what
00:34:36
you're saying is leave media and pat yourself on the back.
00:34:37
You can still tear down an American hero of you.
00:34:40
I think so. I think so.
00:34:43
And I think you will find that the tech people will be the
00:34:46
first ones to say it was killed by the media.
00:34:48
You know they're going to see it.
00:34:49
It was a full on assault. If everything in the world now
00:34:52
is like, you know, just like power and how much you can
00:34:55
influence things, in some ways it circles around.
00:34:58
It's like, OK, well, I guess the media still mattered.
00:35:00
You know, it's such a nihilistic time.
00:35:03
Here's. Here's my question.
00:35:04
Which is it? Does the media matter or not?
00:35:06
Because if it doesn't matter and it allowed Trump to win, that's
00:35:09
fine. Stick to your thesis.
00:35:10
But if it also killed Doge, which I imagine is what you're
00:35:13
going to, I start hearing people say, then clearly what you were
00:35:15
saying at first wasn't true. So I'm just, I'm just begging
00:35:18
these people to pick a side. I don't know which side I fall
00:35:21
on honestly. The other contradiction of this,
00:35:22
which I think is very related to what you're saying, is that the
00:35:26
media doge is terrible. They're firing everybody, It's
00:35:29
the end of the world. And now the takes are like, he
00:35:32
didn't do anything, he didn't succeed.
00:35:35
So there is sort of incoherence also in sort of the media story
00:35:39
of whether this was a big deal or not.
00:35:43
I think I've seen smaller examples, but some more, I would
00:35:46
say balanced coverage, which is that like this is, you know,
00:35:49
they didn't do as much as they claimed they were ever going to
00:35:52
do and that never happened. But like they did still do like
00:35:55
quite a lot and like the what has happened with doge in the
00:35:59
government, like we'll change a lot of how things operate.
00:36:02
But they didn't really like it comes down to like they didn't
00:36:04
really cut like that much waste because like the bulk of the
00:36:07
waste comes from stuff that people don't want to touch.
00:36:09
So or like my waste but spending, you know.
00:36:12
I mean, they wanted, I mean, once you have people freaking
00:36:15
out about their Social Security checks, I think it gets, you
00:36:18
know, infinitely harder and, you know, at least it gets material.
00:36:22
Kate, what do you think? I mean, talking to founders,
00:36:25
maybe people that are closer to that persuasion.
00:36:29
Is the feeling on Elon changing at all?
00:36:32
Have you gotten a sense that people are like, maybe he
00:36:34
overstepped his his bounds and he should just stick to being,
00:36:38
you know, one of the greatest CEOs of all time rather than
00:36:40
anything more than that? No, honestly, I, I think people
00:36:43
really believe in Elon still and, and think that like, I
00:36:47
mean, I, I don't know how much people have changed their minds
00:36:49
in the last few days or the last few weeks.
00:36:51
But like I think that I've learned that kind of regardless
00:36:54
of what he does, he has a huge army of fans that just really
00:36:58
believe, especially in his efficiency approach.
00:37:03
I haven't seen that balter, but I what I'm interested in is
00:37:06
seeing now that Doge is kind of disbanding and that chapter
00:37:10
seems to be over. Like what are people like the
00:37:13
and recent people who went and start and joined up that what do
00:37:17
they have to say about it? Like I think there's been a
00:37:18
little bit of trickling of blogs that are coming out and people
00:37:21
are going to start talking and I'm definitely going to be
00:37:23
listening to to hear kind of what the story of the inside of
00:37:26
all that was like. One good thing potentially to
00:37:31
come out of this, so it's been horrible and mostly bad, is that
00:37:34
I do think Elon in some ways will have to acknowledge that
00:37:37
doing things in government is different than doing things in
00:37:41
the private sector. True.
00:37:43
I think there was this sentiment that it's like, oh, we'll just
00:37:45
bring the Silicon Valley ethos to government and we'll solve
00:37:48
all the problems. But actually you do have to like
00:37:51
get Congress and even an executive that's like trying to
00:37:55
wield as much power as possible. You have to like get all these
00:37:58
different parts of the executive to be aligned with you.
00:38:00
You know, it's not just sort of like, it's not like running a
00:38:04
company. And so I think that is a lesson
00:38:07
that needs to be learned if we want to make actual sort of
00:38:11
change and understand how government operates.
00:38:14
The other thing I just want to say because we sort of started
00:38:17
from a meta point of view, but I do think, you know, what Elon
00:38:20
did was absolutely terrible. It's like people are literally
00:38:23
going to die from not having USAID.
00:38:26
Like he made all these extremely disruptive cuts for basically no
00:38:31
benefit, saved basically no money, and just sort of messed
00:38:36
up the government. I mean, cutting the CFPB is
00:38:39
going to be very bad for a lot of businesses operating anyway.
00:38:42
You know, we talked about that at the summit last week.
00:38:44
Right. So the story is going to be like
00:38:47
he failed, but it's like he he did cause a lot of problems
00:38:52
along the way. And like man, you would think
00:38:56
someone empowered to make so much drastic change and how
00:39:01
America works would have better understood what he was trying to
00:39:03
do before he started it. Yeah, I also wonder how much the
00:39:08
gap between vision and actuality and bringing a Silicon Valley
00:39:12
mindset to government didn't take into account that
00:39:14
popularity matters and you have to actually.
00:39:17
Understand that he needs to be funny.
00:39:19
People need to like it, Yeah. Right.
00:39:21
I mean like approval ratings. I know like for example,
00:39:23
Facebook used to, I don't know meta face or whatever used to
00:39:26
measure like Zuck's approval ratings and and how much the.
00:39:29
Users that he's running for president in days, yeah.
00:39:32
Yeah. And or you know, how much people
00:39:34
thought Facebook cared about them, That was like a metric
00:39:36
about that. But that's fairly rare.
00:39:38
And for the most part, they they don't mind barreling through and
00:39:40
making the changes they want. And failing fast is sort of a
00:39:43
version of that. And the political realm just
00:39:45
doesn't. It doesn't accept that like you
00:39:47
have to roll into your vision the fact that you have to win
00:39:51
people over to your side. Because in business, you only
00:39:53
need, you need your true fans. Elon doesn't need everyone to
00:39:57
love Tesla. He needs enough really
00:39:59
passionate people. We don't we need, you know, the
00:40:01
tiniest subset of people to love newcomer.
00:40:04
But obviously, if you're representing America.
00:40:07
You need to be more generally popular if if you want to appeal
00:40:11
to the politicians that you need to do things who are worried
00:40:14
about getting re elected. Right.
00:40:15
And, and I think one of the bigger mistakes that they made,
00:40:19
aside from just doge as a concept probably being unpopular
00:40:21
is that the figureheads of the Trump right movement, the MAGA
00:40:25
right movement went about it in a very trollish way that they
00:40:28
thought that if they could piss enough people off, they could be
00:40:31
vindicated in their in their process.
00:40:33
And I think it just got to be very unpopular because these
00:40:37
people are unlikable figures for the most part.
00:40:39
And, and the approval ratings show it to be the case, right.
00:40:42
Like Elon's approval ratings are extremely low.
00:40:44
Zach's approval ratings are extremely low.
00:40:46
I don't know where David Sachs is at, but I can't imagine it's
00:40:48
great if. People in the general public
00:40:49
have heard of David Sachs. I wouldn't peg it as in a
00:40:52
positive light at this. Point yeah, tend on a happy note
00:40:56
you know if you're if you're an LP listening to this go support
00:40:59
your local emerging manager. They need your support right
00:41:02
now. You know it's a dark time and
00:41:05
these 4 emerging managers need your help.
00:41:08
So we're you're. Doing the ASPCA ad.
00:41:11
For emerging managers right now, exactly now.
00:41:15
We're piping and Sarah McLachlan, we can get a yeah,
00:41:18
arms of the Angel. Kate, thank you so much for
00:41:20
joining us. I we're we're also huge fans of
00:41:22
your reporting and and you're a fierce competitor too.
00:41:26
So. Hopefully many more times.
00:41:28
Thanks for having me, man. If you've been saying I've had
00:41:33
enough of Madeline and Tom, I've got good news for you.
00:41:40
Layoffs. Yeah, Mark, Someone called Mark
00:41:50
Stenberg quick. We're pivoting we're we're going
00:41:53
to the Cerebral Valley podcast for the next three weeks.
00:41:56
Max Child and James Wilstrom and the Co founders of Volley and my
00:42:00
Co hosts at Cerebral Valley will be helming the podcast with me.
00:42:05
We'll be talking about everything that's happening in
00:42:07
generative AI ahead of the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in
00:42:11
London on June 25th. And then Tom and Madeline will
00:42:16
be back. So stick around.
00:42:18
We'll still be here. Subscribe to the newsletter,
00:42:20
you'll see our names. Go live on sub stack if you have
00:42:23
if you feel like your opinions are being denied, you have.
00:42:26
You guys have endless ways to reach the listener here I'm.
00:42:29
Just going to go to the Mike Solana podcast.
00:42:32
Oh yeah, go on pirate wires up there.
00:42:34
I'm just going to go right to pirate wires.
00:42:35
Godspeed.