Everybody wants access to these private

markets. Joining [music]

>> us right now to discuss all of this is

Kelly Rodriguez. He's a Forge CEO. We

see a world where the [music] private

market opens up and is accessible to any

US and global investor. There's 19

companies in the private market AI

basket. These companies have grown on

average 300%.

>> Please join us in welcoming Gavin Baker,

managing partner and CIO of Atrades. The

ROI on AI has

empirically, factually, unambiguously

been positive. Investing is the search

for truth. We welcome in Brad Gersonner.

It's good to be back with you. You have

a program called Invest America.

>> I think we have a historic moment right

now to get [music] everybody into the

game of capitalism.

>> Do we have a few slides from Brad to

kick this off?

>> You know, let's startic like old times.

like old times. This uh this panel I I

actually was backstage. I said, "Gavin,

do you know we're talking about

secondaries?" He's like, "What do you

mean?" And I said, "Okay, so here, let's

just set this up for everybody. The

room's full of people who are

allocators. People are looking for

distributions. So this is um secondary

markets over the course of the last

decade. This is the amount of money

going into VC each year, the amount of

money coming out of VC each year. The

red line represents the net effect of

that. So Jamath, we're in like 5 years,

right, where a lot more is going in

than's coming out. But the secondary

market is at record volume. So this is,

you know, I call these companies quasi

public companies. These are these later

stage companies. There's buying and

selling that's going on every day. Look

at that, Jason. Relative to the 21 peak.

We thought that was crazy at the end of

21. We're double that now in terms of

secondary transactions. This is the

amount of employee secondary. So this is

people buying into Anderal, Anthropic,

SpaceX now represents 31% of all primary

venture activity is buying into these

secondaries in 2025.

Secondaries are now competing with IPOs

and acquisitions as the principal way

that these guys are exiting. So, I

thought that was a decent setup to start

the conversation this morning just to

level set how important secondaries

[clears throat] have become. And then

the final one is secondaries over the

last couple years were trading at a

discount to market. So, if we wanted to

sell shares in one of our companies,

right, to buyers out there, they were

willing to give us 80 cents on the

dollar in order for us to get liquid so

that we could send DPI back to our LPS.

Today it's at 106. Uh uh so a premium in

the market as a coupon.

>> And this doesn't include some of the

wild west of SPVS that have been

unraveled recently.

>> People charging 10% loadin fees, double

carry and a lot of gray market offmarket

stuff. This is also having a profound

impact, Gavin, on employees at these

companies that I want to hear about

because you've seen it up close and

personal with SpaceX and they have a

very orderly process here. So, why don't

we start there? What impact is this

having on the employees, Gavin? And then

on the market, how orderly is this? And

and who are the buyers? Are the buyers

the sucker at the table? are these

family offices, high netw worth

individuals who keep hearing us talk

about Anthropic or SpaceX or Andril and

they just say I have to own the name and

they're not discerning. So Gavin, maybe

you can start about the impact on the

SpaceX employees you saw firsthand, etc.

Well, maybe broadening it beyond SpaceX,

I do just think if companies are going

to be staying private longer, this is

absolutely necessary. There I think

there are a lot of people who are very

um very wealthy on paper but actually

cash poor and if you're making

tremendous sacrifices

uh because you know you work for a

company that you really believe in and

you're contributing a lot to that

company. It's hard if you can't buy a

nice house for your family. It's hard if

you can't afford to do nice things,

>> especially in year seven, eight or nine

of working at the company and you tell

your spouse we're worth 10 million on

paper, 30 million on paper and you don't

own your home.

>> Yeah. Or year 15. And so I think this is

necessary and important and you know

whether it is good or bad, I think it is

very clear that companies um are going

to stay private for longer.

>> What's the reason to stay private

longer? Truly

>> I I I don't think there is actually a

good reason to stay private longer

>> here. Here

>> and

>> I completely agree with you too.

>> Yeah. And I

>> Why has it happened? This is founders

don't want let's just call it what it

is. Founders don't want to be under a

microscope. They want to build and enjoy

life and have it easier than being on

the public market microscoped.

>> Yeah. I think there is a perception that

life as a private company is easier and

you have more freedom and you can think

long term.

I don't agree with this. I always think

about um Mark Zuckerberg's commentary

that had he been public. So just you

know Facebook um I won't call it a

near-death experience but long ago it's

difficult to believe but I don't 10 112

um Facebook did not believe in apps they

believed in something called HTML 6

>> and HTML 5

>> HTML 5 HTML 5 Yes. You you you you were

the actual

>> it was the cataclysmic debate and it was

me and Brett Taylor. Me versus Brett. I

was like apps I want to go build a

phone. Brett was like HTML 5. Zuck

picked Brett. Spent the next three years

unwinding that decision.

>> Absolutely. And Mark Zuckerberg and

basically the idea was you know the

iPhone comes out and initially there was

not a big app app ecosystem and there

was a thought that hey there's no need

for apps. you're just going to use the

web browser on your phone and HTML 5 was

a way of look of making websites look

mobile native

>> dynamic.

>> Yeah. And this seemed like kind of the

future to a lot of very smart people

including Google, Facebook. Um but it

was not the future. Um it was wrong. And

what Mark Darker has said, I think

several times in public is he profoundly

believes that had he been a public

company

um when you know there was this internal

debate between the and the detail was

actually I went to Zuck and I said I

need a billion dollars to build this

phone and we are in this moment in 2010

where we can have the third leg of the

stool. there's Android, there's iPhone,

neither have really taken off yet.

And and he's like, we don't have a

billion. And I said, but the public

markets will give us a billion. And he

said, no, but then we went public a year

later,

>> but that year made all the difference.

>> Made all the difference. And he said

that had I had the constant pressure

testing from public market investors,

you there's a dynamic. I was I was

talking to another CEO here this

morning. When you're the CEO of a

private company, you are the most

special flower to all of your investors.

[laughter] You're like, you are as

important to your board members,

particularly if you're really

successful. You know, maybe as the board

members families or parents, you know,

the board members think about you a lot.

Um, once you're public, you're one of

thousands of companies. Um, and that's

its own dynamic. But the consequence of

this is is that private investors are

often selling to management teams. And

at some level that can mean telling

management teams what they need to hear

because you want to be able to keep

participating in the rounds. Once a

company's public, you can buy or sell as

you wish. And this means that investors

feel freer to give companies management

teams. And Zuckerberg Zuckerberg said,

"Had I been public, had I been getting

rigorous, detailed questions from really

smart public equity investors, I think I

would have, you know, by the way, the

second unwritten story of that, which

has never been said, he called me. He's

like, "Hey, man, what the is going on

over there?" Uh, and I was like, "Yeah,

I know." Cuz I had just left and then we

wrote a deck

and I walked over to Zuck and I'm like,

"Here's the deck of what you need to

do." Yeah,

>> do these things. Well, this is a key

point. I think Gavin is when you're

private, you do not get clean

information as the CEO and the

management team because people want

access and once you give the truth or

you ask the hard questions, you might

lose access

>> 100%.

>> The sickopantic nature of private

markets is real.

>> Now, an exceptional CEO

>> Elon

>> seeks out negative feedback. looking for

that.

>> But not many and actively discards, but

not many CEOs maybe are are wired that

way. And by the way, I do think we have

to give Brad credit. That was a very

good deck. You said back in 2012.

>> No, cuz he did a second one. He had

>> when he did the second one, he did the

open letter to Zuckerberg at the end of

Was that at the end of 22?

>> October 22.

>> Why don't you call it? Get fit. What was

the uh time to get fit?

>> Time to get fit. That was an impact.

Those are two very impactful.

>> Okay. So look, there's you're you're

hearing the bulls on going public, but

Kelly, take the red team the other side

because you're on the other side. You

built a private business, you sold it to

Schwab, so clearly one of the largest

financial institutions now is going to

ram its way into this market. But then

you're seeing a lot of push back.

Anthropic is like, "Hey, uh, dissolve

these SPVS." OpenAI, I think, was saying

today now, dissolve these SPVS.

Should we dissolve the SPVS? Where are

they coming from? And why are you on the

right side of history?

>> And and have you had to dissolve any of

the ones on your marketplace?

>> No.

>> No. Look, I think that uh first of all,

being a private company CEO for most of

my career and then being a public

company CEO for three years, I recognize

the job is incredibly different. It's

much less fun. Uh you're not doing

>> Hold on. What do you mean when you say

much less fun? Turning into an

investment manager primarily as a public

company CEO

is a very different job than being a

visionary [clears throat]

product first uh first principles

business when you become a public

company CEO everything changes and I

would say in the world we're in now the

kind of capital you can raise the kind

of capital that was represented in the

very last discussion allows you to

extend extend your private life. SpaceX

private company for 24 years. Um but the

reality is these SPVS that are now

emerging because these companies are

getting so big is because a market's

trying to happen

and a company like SpaceX has done this

extraordinarily well. They've run

essentially liquidity programs for

almost a decade

because there's so much pent-up interest

in both being an investor and getting

liquidity for some of the reasons that

Gavin was mentioning. So I think what we

see now is the next phase of this this

Schwab deal with Forge basically says to

the world this is a real asset class.

It's more than just secondaries.

We're going to put these companies, the

company's equity into fund products into

very well-managed, regulated SPV

structures because they do serve a

purpose in the market.

>> Yeah. But if you're how do you convince

Elon specifically to give you access to

that when he wants to do it himself and

he has a team and every six months he

runs it himself? How do you get access

to that? What's your pitch to the next

Elon?

>> Here's the pitch. The pitch is you're

going to go from being a private company

eventually to a public company. What

Schwab represents is 46 million

investors and 12 trillion.

This will change capital access and the

way that you distribute your shares

moving from private to public.

>> How did that work when you pitched them

on that?

>> Were you Well, I'll tell you. We got our

first SPVS on SpaceX in 2018 and 2019.

Were they was he okay with it?

>> Absolutely. Totally permissioned. And

then as we got closer to the IPO, we

said, "Guess what? Um, we've got 30

million retail investors that would like

to have a $50,000 slice of SpaceX."

And and he went out [snorts] publicly

and talked about having broad-based

distribution

>> at the IPO price.

>> At the IPO price and Schwab was named

one of the IPO allocations.

>> Beautiful. I do think this is actually a

very effective pitch. I think a lot of

these CEOs, they're a little bit

ambivalent about, you know, and I think

they understand that maybe the

institutions who are investing in these

private rounds, you know, they may

represent, you know, unions, they may

represent retirement plans, but I do

think they like the idea of

democratizing access and if they're

building something that they think is

great, giving ordinary Americans an

opportunity to participate. I actually

think that's a very appealing story to

to a lot of these CEOs

>> because they're capitalists and and they

understand the power of equity. So Brad,

>> what is the downside then of cuz you're

part of the go direct movement now? BG2

pod officially fifth bestie. Gavin

officially sixth bestie. You [laughter]

got that's Gavin. That's new news. We

officially made you six bestie today.

>> But does that mean I'm definitively

behind Brad? Cuz [laughter] that that's

the real news.

>> I can You're standing behind Brad.

You're just giving him that big bear hug

right behind him.

>> Wow.

>> So, are you saying I'm the big spoon?

>> You're the big spoon now [laughter] in

the in the side draw with the extra

spoons.

>> But Brad, it's getting very weird very

quick.

>> In all seriousness, with great power

comes great responsibility.

Sometimes the, you know, the enthusiasm

people can have can exceed reality.

>> Correct.

>> Going direct, you've become more

measured. I've noticed as your profile

has gone up.

>> I think all of us have to like just make

sure people don't blindly follow trades.

Don't

>> you were talking stuff down on CNBC a

couple of times saying, "Hey, I don't

think the average American needs to be

in some of these companies. There's

time."

>> I get worried. I get worried at this

point in the market stage, particularly

on CNBC where you're talking to retail

investors at home. Yes,

>> I was one of those retail guys looking

up to everybody on this stage, trusting

everybody on this stage. And when people

are telling you to yolo into right

double fee structure, SPVS and all this,

you know, like it's time to be careful,

to do your work, to be thoughtful. We're

in this because we want this to be

durable democratization for a long time.

Yeah.

>> We want to build trust among those who

feel left out and left behind in

capitalism. We all think that we need to

go public sooner. The reason I think we

it is destabilizing

when you're creating trillions of

dollars in private value and 80% of

America think it's a scam where they're

left out and left behind. That's

>> and then they come rushing in

>> and they could be

not so good cards,

>> right? So, all I'm saying, like I said

about they asked the question on CNBC

last week, if you had $100,000 of fresh

capital and you were sitting at home, is

today the day that you would shove it

all into the market? And I said, no, I

think about it in sizes, right? We just

had two of the biggest months in the

last 10 years in the public markets.

They've been big months. So, if I had a

stack of a hundred, I may put 30 to work

today. I'm never going to pick the

bottom. I'm never going to pick the top,

but I certainly wouldn't be putting it

all to work. And I'd say the same thing

about latestage privates, people who are

yoloing into this stuff, and then they

feel really disappointed. They're like,

"Hold on a second. I bought the SpaceX

IPO and it didn't go up 3x."

>> Let me ask you then.

>> Yeah.

>> Do you view this as exit liquidity for

you? Like, would you shape your

portfolio and returns and increasingly

say, "You know what? I don't know when

this guy's going to go public."

>> Yes.

>> Let me just pump the stuff out. Let me

get the distribution. and let me send it

to my LPs and just call it a day.

>> We we are selling into this.

>> You're selling into this,

>> right? So, I have LPs in this room who

say, "Listen, we invested in your VC5 or

VC6 7 or 8 years ago. If you can go sell

a slice of that at four or 5x and we get

DPI and it's priced really high, then go

sell some of it." And we often don't

talk about this in Venturland. Half of

what we do is in the public markets.

Gavin and I get up every morning and we

think to ourselves, should we buy today

or should we sell today? Venture

capitalists don't think about the sell

part. They think about the buy part. So

one of if we're going to stay private

for longer and we're going to have

trillion dollar you know private

companies and data bricks at $200

billion you got to think about is today

a day we should be selling some and

returning it to our investors because

>> doesn't it create though as as what

Jason said these very complicated

personality dynamics where maybe you get

shut out of a new company maybe you get

shut out of an incremental round and you

know there's bad blood because you're a

credible investor And there's this

signaling risk. Whereas in the privates,

if you and Gavin decide to sell, nobody

knows.

>> Well, no. In the in in the private,

nobody knows.

>> Exactly. The public's they don't know

until our 13F comes out. Okay.

>> But in the private market, it's always a

conversation between me and the founder

to say, "Listen, we're we're going to

sell 30% of our position." They never

like it, Chimath. They're always like,

"We wish you wouldn't do that. They

don't want it known, etc." But my job as

a fiduciary to the LPs of this is to do

that.

>> It does feel Gavin like we have crossed

over for early stage venture to a point

in which there is a third way. Either

your company had M&A and we saw in the

presentation yesterday that during the

wrath of Lena there was no M&A and they

just froze the market. Now it's coming

back. IPOs we did have some freezing of

that market for certain periods. But

this third way is now fantastic. I can

tell you as the earliest of the early we

are now pari pursu selling into every

chance we get because our average

investment is at 10 to$20 million

valuations. When they hit 500 million I

tell the founder you're going to start

selling at 500 million. I'm going to

sell right alongside you so that I can

invest in the next you coming into the

market. Everybody's fine with it. I but

I can tell you six or seven years ago

when I did this with a company they

begged me to not participate when they

hit peak zerp 2021 they begged me Jay

Cal you have to be loyal to us you can't

sell paru and I said you you guys are

clearing 40 million of the $110 million

[clears throat] round I'm just asking to

be next to you same amount can I ask

Kelly a question how do you systematize

this so that it's like an exchange so

like if we just want to hit the bid we

can do it like what I don't like about

the secondary markets is, you know, I

ask my CFO, he calls five guys, then my

fun CFO, she calls like four. You know,

>> it's like ticket brokers. We get a bunch

of bids. None of it makes any sense. And

I'm like,

>> and I'm already dealing with, as Brad

said, the agit from the CEO.

>> It's got to be easier than this. Like,

>> yes. Yeah. Look, we 10 years ago, we

said there needs to be infrastructure to

pull this off. This can't just be a big

shadow market. We're sort of in this

tipping point now where we spent the

last 3 years building this brand new

platform so that a company could plug

into it the same way they could list on

an exchange and say we're going to offer

liquidity. And furthermore, if you're a

VC and you're on that cap structure for

10 years and you want to offer LP

liquidity, you can do it in

>> to be specific. What do you mean you're

like we would be plugging into Schwab's

30 million humans that are buying stuff

on? There's there's a platform. We

brought a a platform with about 3

million investors and now we're going to

add 46 million investors to them.

>> Yeah. But wait, hold on a second. Aren't

those are those accredited investors? Do

they need to be? Because we just had the

chair of the SEC on

>> So today, if you are trading individual

shares, whether it's in an SPV or direct

on a cap table, you're accredited.

However, there are products coming to

market, we can talk about this in detail

later, that have 60 companies, including

SpaceX, that are listed products for

unacredited $500 minimums. And that

capital for those funds will be the

underlying

>> closed end funds.

>> These are interval funds.

>> Interval funds. He's got one out now.

>> I think Naval just did USVC as one of

these. He's gonna contribute to

>> now. the closed end funds

>> are are a very different bet because

you're betting on FOMO because if you

look at the underlying value of some of

the assets and those closed end funds

they have no bearing to reality of what

those underlying shares are actually

worth. So price discovery is another key

component of this structural shift. But

to answer your question specifically, if

a VC's LPs want to recycle or want to

get liquid, then a platform like this

will allow them to recycle that capital

and put it back into the next vintage

fund if they want.

>> I have a I have a question for you based

on this. When these returns come out,

the mean

return in venture is going to look

incredible.

The median return is still going to be

So walk us through how people will sort

through that and the reality of what's

going to happen in the next year.

>> Well, so I think there's there's two

very important things. one, I observe if

you if you were a venture firm and you

do not have material exposure to one of

these trillion dollar plus companies

that you had many many chances, you

know, to to buy into. You're not only

your returns not going to be good, but

you're not going to have DPI on a

relative basis, but you're not going to

have DPI. And you know, there's

exceptions. you know are you know you

know great series A firms they may not

have this but their returns are still

amazing with great DPI but in so I am

beginning to see venture firms who don't

have exposure to one of these companies

behave in strange ways because I think

they're starting to feel a little bit of

franchise risk because their DPI and

their returns are going to go from you

know hey top quintile top tile tile

>> so they're doing unnatural ads doing

unnatural things. They're writing what I

see as call options, like a bunch of

these, you know, Neolabs. Well, I need a

story. I've done something. And maybe

some of these call options pay off, but

I do think they're engaging at some

level and maybe

>> they're chasing it.

>> They're chasing gambling terms. Whereas

the people who have exposure to this, I

are being a lot more disciplined because

they know they're in in in a great

position. I think another very important

dynamic is going to happen in the world

of longon only mutual funds and

crossover funds. So, Long Only Mutual

Funds, uh, you know, my for former

employer, Fidelity, amazing place, love

it. Uh, Bailey Gford, Capital Research,

Wellington,

>> Tro, they all can, per SEC rules,

allocate up to 15% of their funds into

privates. And these are the biggest

pools of capital in the world. They

dwarf sovereign wealth funds. But, you

know, most firms, because they don't

want to get in trouble with the SEC,

they say, "Hey, we're going to cap it at

3% or 5% or 7%. It was very public.

Bailey Gford was forced to sell SpaceX

last year

>> for regulatory reasons. And um what's

going to happen as these companies go

public? All of these long only mutual

funds are by and large finding it hard

to participate in private markets right

now because they're at the limits of

their self-imposed

>> 3%

>> 3 5%.

>> When a company goes public and the

lockup expires, it moves out of that

bucket. Nice.

>> So, this is going to be hundreds of

billions of dollars of new late stage

demand that is coming back to the market

after kind of being out out of the

market for a while.

>> That's a lot of dry powder. There's a

lot of dry powder.

>> The net trade is up. Then the the

marginal trade is is up.

>> Founders are going to be in the cap bird

seat. People are going to be looking to

put money to work. Interesting

buzz going around about accreditation

rules. We had the head of the SEC on

Allins interview show. We did it. And

they're going to have a sophisticated

investor test, something I've been

talking about for a long time that would

really democratize the way Invest

America has access. Um, and then funds.

I've been getting pitched for years on,

oh, put your fund on blockchain or sell

your fund into this ETF. Maybe you could

talk a little, Kelly, about the

possibilities around venture funds being

more tradable like secondaries are. Is

that on your road map? Obviously,

there's demand for it. What would that

because I can tell you what that would

do for my LPs, you know, Brad Chamat's

LPs and and previous funds. If you could

come in and out of these funds, the way

you can come in and out of anthropic, my

lord, that could be just incredible for

folks who, I don't know, they have a

divorce, they have a life event, you

know, just a little more fluidity.

>> So, there's been there's been secondary

fund trading for a long time. Um, I

think blockchain and tokenization makes

it more efficient. That world will will

come. But the question we're asking

ourselves now is if you're an LP in a

fund that's holding something as

valuable as this, uh, are are you really

interested in trading your fund position

or do you just want to get out of

>> the big winner, that name?

>> Um, and and our view is it's probably

the latter.

Um, and in some cases funds will come to

us and say, "We've got a vintage fund

that has two companies in it that are 15

years old and we can't clear that fund."

And so that's that's an application of

liquidity to the market that we think is

coming to the market.

>> Are you are you worried at all over this

next year about this idea of retail

being exit liquidity for these three

ginormous companies? like is is there

any risk? Like how do you bucket the

risk? How do you manage the risk? Yeah.

>> What is the risk if something were to

happen? What's the blowback?

>> I was talking with Brad about this

yesterday. We're we're watching these

valuations and these multiples. We had

this conversation at dinner last night

and saying, "Wow, these are these are

extraordinary and people should come

into this market." And

>> extraordinary is a coded word for

>> uh it's you know, it's okay fine. Um

>> it's a bubble. You're saying you're

saying you think they're high the

valuation.

>> I think the retail investor coming into

this space needs to look down market and

look at interesting opportunities that

aren't the things that are on CNBC every

day and have access to them earlier. And

we had a bunch of retail investors show

up in 2018 and 2019 that wanted to be in

SpaceX and they're and they're thrilled

that they got in when the valuation was

30 billion.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and I think if the market opens up,

that's what we'll be talking about. what

what's what what do I want to get into

now that's not you know at the very very

top of the market getting ready to go

public

>> also Brad and Gavin we're getting better

shout out to um Gurley we're getting

better at pricing these IPOs and not

leaving money on the table they're fully

valued in most cases when they go public

yeah or in some cases

>> they're still mispriced they're

massively mispriced

>> well no we we have seen some that have

gone down you know after they go out so

you know

>> nothing good that anybody wants

>> I mean listen anyway what what do you

guys think is are we are we closer to

correctly pricing them?

>> I mean Gav and I have been doing this 25

years. There are moments that the public

market is undervalued relative to

privates and moments where privates are

undervalued relative to public. Right

now everything in the world of

technology is pretty fully valued,

right? Like it's you can't have the

parabolic moves we've had and think that

everything is cheap. That's not to say

that we're not going to go higher, but

when you've been punched in the faces

many times, as all of us have over the

last 15 years in technology, we know

it's a jagged line up and to the right.

So for the retail investor, so long as

they have staying power, so if if you're

going to launch a product, as long as

the retail investor can stay in that

product through the draw down, they're

going to do fine. The problem is most of

them yolo at the top because everybody

gets them all jimmied up and excited and

so they're, you know, they're levering

up. They're doing 2x levered, you know,

memory trades and all this that Gav

and I are. There are 14 ETFs launching

on the day of the SpaceX IPO that are

levered ETFs into SpaceX at like

whatever 1.75 trillion. So, this just

tells me that there's a lot of signal.

We may not be at the top, but we ain't

at the bottom.

>> We're bouncing along. The top might be a

fair, you know, you got to allocate

accordingly. And that's what active

management is about. If we do not if

we're not thinking about that, when when

people are puking into their garbage

cans at the start of the Iran war and

the market is down, Gavin and I are

looking at each other and saying, "Good

God, these anthropic revenues are off

the charts. We got to get more dollars

at risk. shove more onto the table in

both anthropic and public market stocks.

But then 75 days later, it's all

changed. Right now, the market,

>> have you guys ever been in a market

cycle [clears throat] where these moves

are just so concentrated in time where

you take like a year or two's worth of

moves and you compress it into 30 days,

60 days?

>> I mean, this is nothing relative to 99

and 2000.

>> Nothing.

>> This is nothing relative to that.

>> Like, I mean, describe describe. Yeah.

Just package. Sometimes they wake up.

>> What was 992000 like in terms of like a

if this is a roller coaster, what was

that?

>> Yeah.

>> And what was that? I mean, I don't you

know, this is this is this is like a uh

this is a roller coaster that's um like

kind of a gentle sinewave.

>> 99 was Vegas on a Friday night after way

too many drugs.

>> Okay. Like it was out of control nuts.

CMGI had no revenue and the stock went

from $2 to $2,000 over the course of,

you know, six months. They buy Foxboro

Stadium. They're on the cover of Time

magazine and they're out of business 2

years later, right? Like that is very

different than Anthropic, Open AAI, and

SpaceX. These are extraordinarily real

businesses. So, I think the better

compare is like 2021. Yeah.

>> Right. Where valuations get ahead of

themselves or they're at the top end of

the range. We could have a normal

run-of-the-mill consolidation in the

public markets in the semi-index of 10

or 20% which means high beta would be

down 30 to 40% and a lot of people who

just got in would be panicking right but

the people who have been in for 6 months

or 3 years would would would notice that

that's just a blip. So I don't think

it's at all like that.

>> Okay. I have a question for the three of

you. Four. Yeah. Final question.

>> I have final question. Take the top 10

names private companies off. Okay.

Forget those. You can't pick those. Give

me a sub,

you know, in the tens of billions, few

hundred billion private company that you

could buy today a secondary in that you

do not own that you would want to own.

I'll start with you, Brad. Just go

around the horn. Something you don't

own, but if you had the chance to buy a

secondary, you would.

>> I mean, I take a company, you know, in

that what I call inflection growth,

Jamas. So, these are companies, the

thousand companies that are over 3

billion, but let's call it sub50

billion. I think it's the trickiest area

of the investing landscape. Um, because

they're the beneficiaries of high

valuations, yet they still have binary

risk.

>> Right.

>> Right. Like Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, I

don't think these companies have binary

risk, but there are a lot in, you know,

in that bucket that do. Um, and so I

mean, we own most of the ones I want to

own. I I I can't give you one that we

don't.

If I want to own it, I I generally own

it.

>> It's a hard question. [laughter] I'll

give you How about the last one you say?

I'd say like Sierra Brett Taylor's

company. Um, you know, what do they do?

>> So, they're building basically

Salesforce

>> agent native.

>> Got it.

>> So, sales, marketing, customer service

agents that are agent native. I'll give

you the downside and the upside. We also

own a company called Parlo and the same

space in Europe that I think is really

interesting. downside open AI and

anthropics say we're going to do this

and all of a sudden it eviscerates their

hundreds of millions of dollars in

revenue. The upside on on these

businesses is that they actually have

already built very sophisticated agentic

layers and that all these guys Meta,

Google, uh SpaceX come along and say we

want to buy you because we want to

accelerate our path into agent.

>> I I'll give you the name that I was

convinced of today yesterday by um by

Thomas Leant which was Revolute.

>> You know, I had always the kind of like

I had some early Jack like I owned some

Coinbase, I owned some Robin Hood, we

did all of that stuff. It was fine. Kind

of ignored fintech and Thomas backstage

gave me an incredibly we were together

an incredibly compelling pitch for

Revolute and and I and I actually went

and I was like, "Okay, show me what the

Revolute share prices in these secondary

markets." I got kind of curious. Maybe I

should pick up some that. So [snorts]

that that would be my

>> What does Revolute do? Explain for the

audience.

>> It's a bank. It's a bank. And what's

interesting is it's a neo bank that has

a completely next generation stack. kind

of what Brad said is like that theme of

you rebuild it in the modern era and you

unbundle the incumbent that that has a

lot of legs and in a regulated market

that has a ton of legs and so you know

they're doing really well in Europe

they're coming to the United States the

founder seems to be just an absolute

star

>> tens of millions of customers 14 lines

of business they're like a billion

curious like that I I have Gavin do you

have one that you've bought recently

>> no I would just say um well you know two

names that um we've been involved in

publicly is leading are Arya and Drivets

and they're both in the networking space

and basically as um data centers get

more specialized and complicated

you you're going to have increasingly

specialized chips it's called the

disagregation of inference and pre-fill

and decode and to make all of these

chips to work together like a symphony

and have the kind of the right chip for

the right job at the right time I do

think we need to reinvent networking and

Arya and driveets are coming at the

in a very different way. And if you're

an AI lab,

>> you've been one of the earliest. I'll

give you credit. I think that you you

you framed this on one of on a podcast

that I saw, which is there is an

impending super cycle in infra

networking, silicon, and you've really

been at the front of it. I buy into it

completely now, too. Really, it's a

really It's really good. It's really any

names.

>> Uh Neuroobotics

in Europe.

>> Neuroobotics is a company name.

>> Yes. and uh AI powered um logistics

robotics.

>> Love it.

>> Um they're not in the main strip of high

value real estate in Silicon Valley.

They're in Germany.

>> Uh quiet company, big investors, 100

million revenue, kicking ass.

>> Love it. Jason, well, I you know, I I

have a couple of thesis uh that I've

been looking at. One is what is Elon

helping put into space as the price goes

down. And so we did uh direct on the cap

table and SPV for vast which is building

space stations and we think they're

going to win. The other one is what I'll

just call Uber 2.0. You know, we girly

and I took a lot of notes on that, Brad,

as well. And so we were able to do

zipline and we we put a small ticket

size into zipline as well because if you

can take the delivery cost down from $15

to five and then eventually two, that's

going to just drive consumption

massively and it's going to happen in

the air. And these actual drones had

such a false start that everybody gave

up on the entire sector and now it

works. And it was just a very simple

innovation that Keller told me, which

was it's the drone stays up in the air

and drops a tether with the box in your

burrito. If you grab the tether and you

pull it, it just comes down. You don't

have to land like this giant robot in

your backyard with blades spinning to

kill your dog. Well, I think there's

actually a very important like on

Zipline. It's an amazing It has done

great things for the world. Um so my my

at trades is also uh in involved in

zipline but zipline started so the hard

thing is to make anything autonomous

work you need to get it out in to the

world and gathering real world data.

This is how AI works and it's hard to

get approval to fly things around um

autonomously in American airspace. So

Keller had the idea of we're going to go

to African countries and we are going to

de you know if a we're going to help or

deliver medicines to these small

villages and they focused on maternity

and they have cut the maternal mortality

rate in some of these African countries

by 90 to 95%. And so you're in a small

village, there's a one midwife, there's

an app, a woman goes into labor, they

press a button, and you know, an hour

later, a zipline drone drops a

refrigerated package of modern medicine,

blood, and everything needed. They did

it for seven years

>> and it's had a huge impact on health

outcomes in these African countries

>> and now it's come to America.

>> I I this is an incredible story and I've

basically now reconstructed my firm to

do the barbell. I missed the seed

investment. I turned him down because I

was like, "We don't invest on that

continent. We don't have any insight

into it. We don't understand it and

hardware is hard." And he has the email,

whatever. And I've stayed in touch with

him and he said, "Listen, I figured it

out." And I said, "Hey, you know, I have

the syndicate. Let me see if I can

correct that mistake. May I invest?" He

said, "I I you're my dream investor.

I've wanted you on this whole time and

it's just so important." Um, no. No.

we've been friends for all this time and

I've you know I have had him on the pod

three times

>> and he said when are you going to be on

the cap table and I said you know what I

learning from you guys specifically this

late stage stuff I'm like well I can do

that and here we are and

>> on that note

>> yes

>> let's wrap up

>> yes well done guys thank you so much

>> thank you Kelly thank you

>> thank Thank you. [music]

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