How I Invest with David Weisburd - E359: What Charlie Munger Taught Me About Venture Capital
Episode Date: April 30, 2026What if the real edge in venture isn’t price—but who you choose to partner with for a decade? In this episode, I sit down with Jamie Montgomery, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of March Capital, ...to discuss how long-term relationships, not transactions, drive venture outcomes. Jamie explains why asymmetric upside matters more than negotiating the last percentage point, how conviction and discipline shape follow-on decisions, and why understanding your own biases is critical when doubling down. We also explore capital cycles, liquidity dynamics, and how AI is forcing every company to either reinvent itself or fall behind.
Transcript
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So, Jamie, you have 1.65 billion AUM, and you've been investor for the last 25 years after being a banker.
You used to have a weekly meeting with Charlie Munger.
What did you guys talk about?
He did most of talking.
I did a lot of listening.
I was probably afraid to say anything for a couple of years.
He's just an incredible intellect.
And he had so many ways of thinking about businesses and life.
and we first got together.
I was at the age of where my father had passed away that year
and his wife had passed away,
and we had a small group of us would get together,
and we thought, well, it'd be nice to have a breakfast with Charlie
and another good friend of his, Rick Garon,
who's a very prominent investor and talented individual,
to talk about what we look forward to in life,
you know, in the next 30 years of our lives,
and I think he was happy to have some younger friends
And you're in turn 90, a lot of your friends have passed away or no longer active.
And I think we kept him young and he shared a lot of wisdom with us.
What did you learn from him?
You could spend hours on that.
I mean, I think.
What surprised you the most to hear Charlie say?
Well, Charlie was in the last decade of his life.
And so he was probably more patient with us and maybe he would have been with people earlier in his life.
And so I think he was always.
very consistent about knowing what your zone of competency is and sticking to that and
not compromising at all of any values or whatnot. Just to add the highest standards for, you know,
individual conduct and company conduct and complete intellectual honesty. And, you know,
if you don't know something, know what you don't know. People get in trouble when they think
they know something when they don't actually know it. So I think certain intellectual honesty is,
you know, real hallmark of those conversations. Chairman of Jeffries, Joe Steinberg, who's a
relative of my mind and also did a couple of deals with Warren Buffett. He always talks about how
difficult it is to get Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to get out of their kind of buybox.
They were such disciplined investors. That's true. And I think if you look at Berkshire
Hathaway, the lesson there was he sort of had to be Charlie Warren to build Berkshire.
And their concept along succession was they had some principles, the type of companies they
want to build, the amount of capital they had to deploy, their long-term point of view on owning
companies and the values that they have. And you needed to be Charlie a Warren to build that,
but afterwards, I think they felt very comfortable for Greg to take over. And so those weren't just
Charlie and Warren, they became pretty ensconced within that entity. And I don't think that
will change. You mentioned that you differentiate yourself in banking by being relationship
versus transaction driven. Does that always work in banking? To me, from the outside, it seems like
sometimes attract transaction-oriented in the short-termism is the right model for that business.
You're correct.
Is that why you changed to investing?
One of the reasons.
I mean, like banking rewards transactional bias, and the culture attracts people who are, you know, fairly coin operated.
And, you know, and that leads to a certain behavior.
My idea of fun was never bonus time on running an investment bank.
Everybody has claims to do and everything.
And I think one to be more modest in life about one's accomplishment.
So did we build a successful bank?
Absolutely.
But, you know, and what was the joyful part of it?
It was working with entrepreneurs to help them be successful, bringing in young people
and teaching them the business and training them.
They've gone on to incredible jobs and responsibilities throughout Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
So that was very rewarding.
But the nature of it is very, you know, financially driven.
And, you know, in some ways, you're driving for,
an extra five or 10 percent or more on a transaction. It's great, but that doesn't really lead to
massive wealth. Massive wealth is when you have alignment and you have long-term compounding,
and that's where I've been focused on.
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had this essay about nice people could still make great investors on this exact point,
which is if you're in the next stripe, if you're in the next Airbnb, if you're in next Uber,
even if you undernegotiate and give up that last 5%, you still will get 100x versus a 95x,
or you'll get a 300x versus a 240x, and you could still be very successful in certain industries
that are inherently have high upside and non-zero-sum dynamics.
You're looking for what we call asymmetric upside, and we're never the high bidder in the
things that we go into. We always try and offer a fair price because you're going to have to have
some margin of air. But at the same time, you're trying to get in the best companies at a reasonable
price. So we're not looking for a deal per se. We're looking to align ourselves with, you know,
really high-quality entrepreneurs and be their financial partner. Being a successful partner is having
a real balance in the relationship in terms of governance, in terms of equity ownership, incentive,
of mentoring and development of the team
and helping them be successful,
not just in the work environment
or elsewhere in their life as well.
Tell me about this turkey sandwich test
that you used to determine
whether you want to invest in a company.
Well, look, I think maybe American cuisine
is evolving a bit.
But you know, you kind of look at it and say,
I'm going to invest in a company for five years,
seven years or longer,
and you're going to have at least four board meetings a year.
So you said, well, do I want to have 20,
the 30 turkey savages with this individual he or she.
And now maybe you get a little more diversity and food choices nowadays.
But it really is a long-term commitment.
And you realize the balance sometimes recently,
we're recruiting a new CEO for one of our companies
and interviewed 30 candidates.
I had myself, this is more dates and I went on when I got married.
What is going on here?
And it comes down to it's a long-term commitment.
So it's like, do you want to sit next to this person flying from New York to L.A.?
or L.A. to London, I mean, you know, because you're going to spend a lot of time with the CEOs.
And is there a certain chemistry there that you can mutual respect and ability to communicate?
And everyone's different. And we have very different types of CEOs or not just different animals or maybe different species.
You know what I mean? So, but it's, it's great. I mean, it's a beautiful thing about it.
But you really have to sit and think about that long-term commitment.
It's interesting because there's almost two aspects here.
there's managing the fund, which is where can I invest to maximize my returns, but there's also
managing the career and the compounding benefits of career. Some of the top angels going back to some of my
mentors, some of them would make checks into companies, 2550K checks just to learn about the industry
and for information, knowing that that information in a new side of the market, like say,
crypto will allow them to later deploy $5, 10 million dollars much more effectively. There's these
different ways that you manage your own career and the compounding on your career that you don't necessarily
in a single fund. I agree with you.
One has to think about not just your income statement in life, but your balance sheet,
you know, your goodwill, your, and your network, which translate your ability to help companies.
I mean, sure, we've put our toe in the water in certain sectors or backed certain seed funds
to get access to information.
And, you know, I don't know if that's worked or not, but, you know, you're trying to help
people be successful.
And usually that comes full circle.
With our investors' money in March capital, we try and build portfolios of 12 to 15 companies per fund.
Most of our money comes in in years two to five, what we call early growth from helping a company scale up and we invest and we follow on.
There's a big follow-on.
We might do a cross-fund investment.
We also offer to the later stage investments to our LPs.
We have about $650 million with a co-invest on top of the $1.65 billion.
But you have to be very careful that the dollars you're deploying are well-deployed.
that's the key.
You're known for taking very high conviction bets and doubling down, sometimes tripling down into companies.
What's your framework for when you know to double down?
That's why I go to church every week.
It's important to understand the psychological forces that exist in investing.
And I was pleased to be by it on today.
And you've got a background in psychology at Harvard.
It's an interesting mix of the MBA and the psychology.
And there's a lot in the psychology investing that people tend to.
to overlook or, you know, and it's biases. We all have biases. And oftentimes when you're
doubling down, you, you, you already have a conviction about that company and it's hard to change
your mind. There's recent information that gives you a recent C bias. There's some star investor
coming into the rounds. That's another bias. Social proof. Yeah, social proofing, you know.
And so you think about, it's like a half dozen. And you say, well, the last round we did at 30 times
forward revenue. This round's only at 15 times forward revenue, so it's a great deal. You know,
so you have this, you know, transitory valuation bias. But then you got to step back and say,
wait a second, you know, what do we really think the outcome is going to be here and invert down to
usually we build a risk curve where you say, right, what are the three probabilities? And you start
my career in the intelligence world where you say, well, you know, what's the percentage that something bad
happens? You know, like you lose money.
or you're just dead money.
You know, what's the bad scenario?
And what's the most likely scenario and what's the upside?
And what are the probabilities across those three?
And how do you wait it?
Speaking of doubling down, you have one of the most famous conferences in tech, the
Monty Summit.
I was lucky enough to be invited this past.
We were delighted to have you in LA.
Thank you.
And you've compounded that over 23 years.
Yeah.
Now, I went in year 23 and I saw something really nice.
But I imagine it didn't start like that in the beginning.
How has that evolved over time?
and what's made you invest so much into this conference?
The first conference was in, gosh, what would it be, 2000?
2003, I think.
Yeah, 2003.
And you say yourself, what were we doing?
We're coming out of a tech bust, right?
And I had the theme, technology is back.
And so our investors, that's just so assonied, you know.
And Forbes really liked us.
They ran a cover story.
Technology is back.
And the guy, publisher sent me,
and, hey, I just had to take that line.
It's great.
You know, and we had 48 private companies and 24 public companies.
And, you know, and one of the companies was the Facebook, you know, year one.
And there was a fellow running at Van Hata or something like that.
He was president.
And he came down and he presented.
And we had some amazing companies there that year.
I remember.
But I didn't know what would make people show up.
So I used to coach little.
back there for my boys.
And my assistant coach was Glenn Frye, who was from the Eagles.
So I said, so I hired Glenn to come play with his band, you know.
And I figured if we had a dinner the night before with the Eagles playing,
people might show up for the conference the next day.
I'd say around for the conference.
And so, and it worked, you know.
And we, we had about, I don't know, 425 people there that year.
And we launched it.
And it was, at that time, it was a conference for the bank.
And so our goal was to bring clients in and finance them, bring clients in and sell them to the larger strategics you're there or take companies public.
And we'd build these great relationships.
I worked very well.
We were able to monetize it that way and how we paid for it.
And when I sold the bank, you know, exit of 2012, I'd run and see people.
And I said, you know, I appreciate working with the over the last decade for two.
And I want to tell you what I'm planning to do is, you know, this is March capital.
And they'd say, well, you know, I really admire you and every day.
have you done for the tech community.
I'm glad you're going to stay in the tech community.
And I'm not going to miss any of your bankers, but I'll miss the conference.
I hear this over and over again.
I thought, geez, we've got to keep the conference, right?
And so we relaunched it at March Capital.
And it's been a great way for us to bring investors, including our own LPs, other LPs,
sovereign wealth fund and whatnot, and entrepreneurs and corporate execs together and some
government leaders and military leaders and whatnot together to talk about.
about the innovation economy and key issues facing it
and how we could all collaborate to,
and it's sort of nonpartisan, not really political.
It's just like right down the middle of the aisle,
but very practical.
And we had about 1,200 plus people there this year,
about 180 speakers and 120 companies were there
in different capacities presenting and talking.
And it's a great success, but what it really is is a community.
It's a lot of work to do it right.
We pride ourselves in doing it right
and being well run, but it's all, but it's, it brings joy too.
I mean, you think about, I have people from all over the world who come in and, you know,
from a couple dozen countries and I think of the travel that saves me.
I don't know.
Yeah.
You know, and our ability, the velocity of the meetings that we have.
And it's great.
And the companies really like it and it gives us a chance to have all of our investors
together, the front end of it, and then roll into the summit.
And we do some things in the community during it as well to have a reception at the Getty.
And we fund children's education programs there.
It's one of the many things that we do as part of our foundation outreach at March Capital
and also myself, family.
And so there's a lot of good things going on alongside.
You see a lot of people in the government there that maybe we've supported through tough times
or good times and all bipartisan initiatives and at the national level.
I work with most of the presidents up to recently.
You just, it's good, right?
It's all good.
Yeah, I think a lot of people misunderstand.
People always ask me, how do you have time for a podcast?
Or I'm sure people ask you, how do you have time for a podcast?
conference, they don't understand the downstream efficiencies. If you just
focused your effort on something, one singular thing that you could compound, that you could
invest in to make it great and make it as a resource for people, you don't have, there's a lot of
things we don't have to do. We don't have to really spend a lot of time fundraising. We don't
have to spend a lot of time branding ourselves with GPs, having these 30-minute Zoom meetings
that nobody knows who you are. You don't know who they are. There's so many downstream consequences
of doing one thing really well. One fellow came and said, you know, I read about you in the
Steeffel and your report and everything you're doing.
the community, they featured you. I said, they did. Can you send me a copy? I mean, I was like,
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so there is this down to the ground. You don't even know what it is, right? Don't get on the way
of compounding. That was one of Charlie's. If something is compounding, like the conference is
compounding. I think I got 10 million social views in a couple weeks around the conference.
It's, you know, 10 million.
I mean, usually have to get arrested to get that many social news.
But it's all positive, right?
You're very bullish on American dynamism and this new crop of companies trying to solve now Department of War issues for the U.S.
Why are you so bullish on American dynamism?
I just don't think it's America.
It's Western Europe as well.
We had a former defense minister of Germany there and Katie Gutenberg.
I don't know if you heard him speak, but he said, yeah, we have a $100 billion set aside
for spending or investment in infrastructure, the defense industry in Germany.
And we could grow that to $500 billion.
His partner is the number two in the administration.
So he's speaking with some authority.
And 40% of that will come from traditional suppliers, 40% of that will come from new suppliers,
and 20% will come from commercial sector.
So you just basically had some of their signal that there's $200 billion.
of funding available for innovative defense companies, just in Germany alone.
So that's actually a big number, you know.
And I think, you know, Silicon Valley was always allergic to Department of Defense or acted like it was.
And recently they've become a lot more focused on it.
There are things you can do that in the intelligence world with software or you can do things
that go bang or you can work on areas that are critical technologies.
And that's where we're more focused on, which could be quantum computing, cyber, superintelligence.
And some of that's manifested through the Genesis project, which is being run out of the energy department by Deputy Secretary Harry, who came from IBM as a head of research.
This year, they're going to spend about $3 billion on funding competitive technologies that approve of our standing vis-a-vis China and some of these critical technologies.
And several of our companies are in the middle of that.
For example, could we use superintelligence to create synthetic versions of rare earth minerals
to provide a little bit more independence from certain supply chains?
And things like that.
So there's various ways to play it.
It's a huge opportunity.
We can't do everything.
And so we're kind of focus on the intelligence side of it.
Your other question, though, is kind of like there's American dynicism and there's sort of a dynamic U.S. economy.
And I think that's a very interesting question.
I mean, I think when one works with new early stage companies and growth stage companies,
is when you're helping them scale, you have to be optimistic.
You just kind of play it out.
I mean, the U.S. economy is about a $30 trillion economy now.
And between 10 and 15 years from now, say 12 years from now,
could easily make a $50 trillion economy.
Sort of wealth creation is unprecedented.
And it creates a lot of opportunities across the board
and government revenue to pay down debt,
investment in infrastructure in different areas.
So I think we're entering a very dynamic period of innovation and growth and wealth creation.
Now, one could argue that it's skewed between the concentration of wealth.
And I think that's a real issue.
I think it's – but I would rather double the wealth than not double it.
And we just got to figure out how to handle that properly.
Now, at the summit, we had a gentleman there named Matt Mahan,
who's a centrist candidate Democrat wanting for governor.
And he's not liked by his fellow Democrats because he's basically saying, you know, we haven't done a very good job in California.
That's controversial.
Yeah, that's controversial.
It shouldn't be, right?
But if you look at what I just talked about on a national level going from $30 trillion to $60 trillion,
and the global economy going from $100, $120 trillion, doubling, let's look at California.
Ten years ago, our economy was about $2 trillion.
And now the economy is $4 trillion.
So the economy in California doubled in 10 years.
So this is a real-world scenario we're going to face.
And what's happened in those 10 years?
Well, the population in California is flat to down.
You've probably had a couple million people leave
and a couple million illegal immigrants show up,
but it's roughly the same population.
You've had a 25% increase in government employment
by the state of California,
and you've had a doubling of tax revenue
from around 170 billion to over 350 billion.
Yet even with 350 billion of revenue,
we're still can manage to run in each.
billion deficit this year, plus have massively unfunded off balance sheet pension obligations.
So even if you double the economy, you can still make a mess out of it, if you're not careful.
And then on top of that, they'll say, well, we don't tax enough, so we're going to put a wealth tax in,
which then you have people buying homes in Florida, right?
And you'll see it.
The headline news is correct.
There's a 5% tax on the assets of people.
Assets they control of people of more than $1 billion.
And it's written as an initiative so the language can't be changed if it passes.
And it's poorly written.
So if you control 10 to one voting shares like Zuckerberg does, he'll be taxed on the shares
that he controls rather than the ones he actually owns.
So it's like a 50% tax on wealth, you know.
Yeah.
And Sergey Branda and Larry Page.
I guess the good news are just saying tax are rich.
They're not saying eat them.
So there's some upside there.
But you look at it and say, okay.
And why is that?
Well, the problem is, is that you have this K-shaped growth where you, you
you have the highest level, you know, in spite of the all the investment in California,
you have the highest level of homelessness in the country.
You have about a poverty rate, which is the highest in the country, about, you know, 16, 17%,
in California is tied with Louisiana.
You know, we're schools in the country.
I mean, go on and on.
It's, you know, we're not getting what we should get for the money.
And as a result of that, we have a situation where between the median and the top 10% income
is a much higher ratio than it's ever been, you know, or lower, if you're on the low end of that.
And there's just greater and greater inequality of, you know, now the median income in California
has grown from about, you know, about $60,000 a year to $100,000 a year of the last 10 years.
So that's gone up quite a bit.
But there's that bottom 20% have really suffered.
A lot of them are new immigrants because people middle class left, so you had a little bit
hauling out.
But, you know, the challenge is, is how do you.
give that bottom 10, 20 percent a leg up.
And a lot of the policies that we're pursuing don't actually work.
And then we get in our own way by making housing so expensive because of permitting.
We can't get insurance in California.
And the schools aren't very good.
So I say all that because I say, we're going to be like the dog who catches the car.
So we've got to figure what the hell we're going to do, right?
If we can really double our economy to 30 trillion to 60 trillion, what are we going to do when we do that?
I mean, it's a great opportunity.
We just had a golden opportunity.
Imagine being governor of California.
I say, you know, you're here for eight of these 10 years and we're going to double the wealth of the state.
Your tax revenues are going to double and do something good with it.
And they pooch it entirely, right?
And that's what's happened.
And by just bringing that subject up, he's ostracized, right?
It's not like, it's all facts.
I didn't say anything that isn't, you know, factual.
It's not political.
And they'd rather blame somebody in Washington for all this, right?
And so I think it's a really interesting question about how as a citizen and very,
and you're growing entrepreneurs and you're helping to be successful and you're creating jobs,
you're doing a lot in the community. How can you effectively partner with the government to sort of,
you know, keep things on track? David Freeberg recently publicly said that 87% of founders that he knew
were thinking about or already planning to leave California. And I think there's two different
questions. One is what do you do from a tax standpoint? And this wealth tax, I've, I've,
run it through AI. There doesn't seem to be a positive economic rationale on it, except
like as a political stance. Yeah. And then if you don't do the tax and you have all this innovation,
how do you distribute and how do you invest into the wealth gap? But it's two different questions
and people are really combining into one question because it's politically expedient. But the question
is, A, first do no harm. First make sure that you're not killing the golden goose. And now that
the golden goose is there, how could you make the system work better for the state? How do you
improve education. How do you do all these things without actually killing the revenue? Yeah,
that's it. That's a challenge. And I'm not a, you know, government employee, but I, you know,
I think we need to elect people at, you know, Los Angeles and then a whole other case, California
and elsewhere that can do that, you know. And it's lower the noise a bit and get on with the work.
I work closely with Steve Wesley when he was a CFO, a Democrat.
an Arnold, a Republican, a bipartisan to balance the budget 25 years ago.
We were very successful.
No, it can be done.
I mean, the opportunities are massive.
So I'm saying, we're creating this massive amount of wealth.
Let's invest it intelligently.
You know, let's create a better world.
As a VC, you've really been investing since 2014.
What's something that you've recently changed your mind on?
Oh, I've been giving out some thought lately, and I think we're pretty Socratic.
And I change my mind every week, you know, because at the day, there's nothing better than to get around the table with eight or ten intelligent people and say, what are you seeing?
And we start most of our board meetings with our portfolio companies.
We might have three or four really great funds in it with us.
Usually there's a – and I always say, all right, before we start and we go down this path of PowerPoint, can everyone talk for a minute or two about what's the most interesting things they're seeing in the market?
at least a fascinating conversation.
And it puts the whole board conversation in a context, which is kind of relevant and current.
Great news about AI is, you know, I think it gives everybody a chance to reboot their business.
People say, you know, you're going to be killed by AI or, you know, this business, we put out of business.
It's really giving everybody a new, if they have the right mindset, a new lease on life.
You can say, you know, I can, everybody,
all of our companies together, and I challenge them at the morning of the 10th.
Like, you know, we're doing things differently in March Capitol, very differently.
And I want each of you to really think hard about it, listen and learn the next couple
days.
And we have McKinsey here doing some case studies and BCG and others and thought leadership
and come back the next month or so with how you're going to do things differently.
And it's like, it's all quite positive.
There's not this sort of sass apocalypse and all, you know, doom and gloom.
I kind of changed my mind and said, you know what?
Everybody has a reboot here, right?
AI, the venture business was kind of going down the drain in 2022.
You know, people put a lot of money to work and really bad investments.
You know, there was no liquidity.
And AI gave it a whole new lease on life.
It was like dead.
It's the one thing I learned the most post.
through the podcast is you have to keep on investing in every vintage.
I was extremely lucky to invest in Anthropic, the $4 billion around in 2023.
And had I not known this idea of just keeping money at stake and investing every vintage,
I would have missed it.
You do, up to a point, you have to be in every vintage, but every vintage may not be a year.
That's one thing I would say.
Tell me about that.
Well, so as I was talking about AI comes along, creates a whole new,
lease on life and you have AI-native companies and you have the companies that are we have to
reinvent themselves and that's really interesting work.
We have companies that say, I'm going to double my sales, triple my profitability and grow
and over the next three.
Every day I got a note from one of our CEOs that they've gone off.
I said, well, I got back and my co-founder didn't want to do what I did and five of the eight
management members agreed with me.
So three of them left, the co-founder's gone and we've cut a third of the team.
We're going to accelerate a growth and we're profitable to the day.
We're raising more money.
well, Bob, you know, it's like, this is great.
I get by those every day now, right?
And so I'm thinking, hallelujah, right?
I want more of this, you know.
And it's like, now, come back to the vintage thing.
It's like, we raised a fund in 2021, and we do a final close in 2022.
We do a few investments.
And I'm like, oh, my God, what do we just do?
And early 2022, interest rates go up.
The iron rule capital market is a 1% increase in interest rates results on 10% change in valuation.
So five and a half.
That's basically math.
Yeah.
55% draw.
Boom.
Flows through the privates.
And so I said, look, we're going to freeze investments for a year, let things settle down,
let us AI permeate, and then we'll start making some investments at the end of 2022, early 23.
So we invested then.
We put a money to work.
And then the average series B was probably 2.20.
20 and 21, dropped to half of the, oh, 50%, well, dropped at about 140 to 120,
and then went back up in 25 to 240.
So you had these Vs.
And it was a couple of year cycle.
So I answer your question.
You know, there was a peak in 2021, trough in 22, 23, peaking again late 24, 25.
And it's pretty high right now.
And people say, well, okay, what's going to happen next?
First of all, I'll start by saying, I have no idea.
But I'm going to give you a, I summarize in New York.
I gave a talk.
I was at the New York Athletic Club and a lot of LPs and family offices.
And I asked, what do you guys have the most exposure to?
And most of them were exposed to private equity and the largest within that was software.
I said, all right, well, you're not going to like this, but you're all screwed.
You know, because there's going to be a 40% reset on software prices and you're in leverage bets.
And so the debt holders are going to own.
own the companies and so, you know, but even then the debt probably won't be very high quality.
So you really shouldn't be investing that category.
You know, everyone's like looking at me, who is this guy?
You know, where do you find this?
Yeah, who brought this guy, you know?
And I'm like, you asked, right?
You know, you want the honest answer.
And then now people go, how do you know that?
You know, and you say, well, I was just kind of looking at it, you know, it seemed to me like
what made sense.
And people believe what they want to believe and they see what they want to see and hear what they
want to hear. And we have these filters that biases from earlier. Now people think, okay,
there's this incredible investment in AI infrastructure. It really is. It's unprecedented.
And even with all that investment, assume it is made and there's power to power it,
which I think we'll figure some of the stuff out. It's not going to be easy. There's still
going to be a shortage of supply of compute, you know, and you have compute, you have inference
computing, which is higher margin, training, compute lower margin. Maybe they go to more pre-training,
you know, shipped to higher margin compute.
We're at this inflection point where companies are really going to grow.
So this is a great time to put money to work.
And so I'll suck it up on the valuations.
But I'd say, well, wait a second.
There's only so much money in the world, right?
As I walk around New York this week and call on heads of banks and big investors,
and you look at where the capital flows going.
And there's more and more money being sucked out of the system by the large,
hyperscalers who never needed financing before to build out infrastructure, you know.
And you go, okay, that's great.
But the effect of that is there just isn't as much liquidity around for the other areas.
And so I think we're, you know, unless there's some change, I think, you know, you're starting
to see the liquidity start to dry up.
People don't really think about liquidity flows when they're in venture.
They, you know, they don't think about the relative.
competition for capital. They think, well, you know, I'm a mid-sized fish. When I tell some venture
capitalists that they're inherently competing with lower middle market P.E., they look at me like
I'm full. What do you mean on competing with lower mill market P.E.? I'm competing outside
other emerging managers. But from the LP standpoint, they're looking at their entire portfolio,
and they're thinking, where do I get the best? Yeah, where I got a bank? And the capital markets,
money is flowing in the structured finance with the hyperscalers, and there's less money available
for the other categories. And I think it's going to be a tough financing market for a number of
companies. And I think you will see a correction in the private valuations again. And therefore,
let's revisit this in a year and see if I'm right. Come back for Monty, 2027.
Well, Jamie, you're absolute legend. Thanks so much for jumping on the podcast and looking
forward to doing this in a year. Well, we'd be delighted to do it and come on out to Sunny,
Southern California next March, 9th and 10th will be and set up a studio for you there and we do a few of these.
I'm going to having you. Thanks for having me today. Thank you, Jamie.
