The Pomp Podcast - #410: Jeff Richards on Investing In Innovation

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Jeff Richards is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital. He has been at the firm since 2008 and previously spent 13 years as an entrepreneur and operating executive in the US and Asia. Jeff founded two technology startups, including R4 which was acquired by VeriSign.  In this conversation, we discuss Jeff's investment strategy, Wish, Coinbase, Lambda School, Slice, his biggest winners & losers, the advantages to being a public company, the resiliency in Silicon Valley, and various geographic investment markets around the world.  ============================== BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Products include high-yield interest accounts, USD loans, and no fee trading. To start earning today visit: http://www.blockfi.com/Pomp ============================== Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Jeff Richards is a managing partner at GGV Capital. He has been at the firm since 2008 and previously spent 13 years as an entrepreneur and operating executive in the US and Asia. Jeff founded two technology startups, including R4, which was acquired by VeriSign. In this conversation, we discussed Jeff's investment strategy, the company Wish, Coinbase, Lambda School, Slice, his biggest winners and losers, the advantages to being a public company, the resiliency in Silicon Valley, and various geographic investment markets around the world. I really, really enjoyed this conversation with Jeff, and I think you will as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

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I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys, bang, bang. I've got a special treat. I've got Jeff here with me. Thanks so much for doing this, sir. Good morning or good afternoon, your time. Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. What did you do before GGV?

So I grew up in Seattle, moved to the East Coast in 1990 to go to college up in New Hampshire at Dartmouth, played basketball for four years there, and then moved to Silicon Valley in 1995. I did a short stint in a ski town called Ketchum, Idaho in between. I learned a lot there and then moved to San Francisco in 95. I worked in consulting for three years with PwC in the US and Hong Kong. So I got my first kind of taste of working in Asia, 95, 96. And then I started my first tech company in 1997 when I was 25 years old, started a software company called Quantum Shift. We grew it from zero to 30 million in sales in three years, which was awesome. Uh, the only, the only sidebar to that is we raised $125 million along the way. And, and we were going to go public in

2000 and then the market cratered and we got punched in the face. And, uh, you know, as Mike Tyson says, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face and we got punched. Uh, so it just was, it was brutal. Um, and the business, we lost half our revenue in six months and, and, uh, ended up kind of splitting up the company and selling it. I left in 2002. So I started when I was 25, left when I was 30, walked away with nothing. At one point, I was running a fairly valuable company and walked away with zero. So I learned a lot. Got married, started my 10 company in 2003. We sold that to VeriSign, which is a public tech company. I then spent three years at VeriSign and then I joined GGV Capital in May of 2008. So I've been here for

13 years. It's been great. GGV has one of the most interesting foundations, I think, in terms of you guys are a global venture capital firm. You manage, I think it's $5 or $6 billion. Maybe talk a little bit just about why join GGV and then kind of how do you think about the way you guys invest or the themes you're looking at? Yeah. So we're a $6.5 billion global venture capital firm. We operate as one team across the world. So that's a unique aspect of our business. Most funds split it up and it'll have like an Israel fund, a China fund, a US fund. We operate is one team. We have about 90 people in the US, Singapore, Beijing, and Shanghai. We invest in India, Latin America, Southeast Asia, China, and the US. What that allows us to do, and I think

similar to some other global firms like ours, whether it's a Blackstone or a Goldman Sachs or a DST, is see trends and themes that are playing out globally and have that lens. We always like to joke that there's only 330 million people in the US. There's 7.5 billion people globally. So if you can address that whole audience and bet on themes, whether it's a digitization of healthcare, digital finance, fintech, SMB tech, software, internet, e-commerce, why wouldn't you want to bet on those trends around the world? Particularly if you can build up some expertise and build a flywheel of entrepreneurs and executives that can help you grow in those industries. And so one good example, we were an early investor in Alibaba Group back in 2003 when it was a $10

million company. I think it was valued at about $200 million. This is before I joined, by the way. So when I say we, it's the royal we. But that experience of watching Alibaba grow into the world's largest e-commerce platform, and oh, by the way, building relationships with all of the executives inside of that company as they went on to then start and be part of other companies, we were able to fund other e-commerce businesses around the world. And today, I'm on the board of BigCommerce, which is a software company in the US, and the e-commerce space. My partner Hans is on the board of Wish and Poshmark. We invested in Peloton. We invested in Affirm. We invested in Square. So just a whole string of things that we've invested in that

category all over the world. And so that's our big thesis is it's not about stage. It's about sector and themes and trends and getting those right at a global basis. And if you get them right, you can back multiple billion-dollar companies all over the world. Yeah. What's so interesting to me here is basically once you see it in one area, you really can then go and capitalize it in other areas. How much of that is seeing the trend in the United States and then kind of going and finding it in other markets? I think that's kind of what we saw in the 2000s and maybe into the beginning of the 2010s. Or are you now seeing the reverse where you might see a trend happening in China or India or somewhere else, and then trying to

find that happening here in the US? Yeah, it's a great point. So, you know, from 2000 to 2010, I think everybody thought of the trend of things get basically created in the US and then replicated elsewhere. And that's still happening to some extent. But with the internet population and over a billion users on mobile phones in India, China, Africa, Southeast Asia, you're seeing a lot of innovation happen in those other markets. And so there are things happening like China, for example, is ahead of us on digital commerce. They're ahead of us on e-commerce. Over 50% of the retail market in China is now e-commerce. In the US, as of January, it was 16%. It obviously spiked in the last few months. So there are things that are coming from

China and from these other markets that we're adopting and we're learning from. So you could argue like, I mean, look at TikTok, right? That came from China. So I think it's a little bit of both. And then it's just the innovation around the world with access to capital flowing so freely now, when things do get created in one part of the world, they do get replicated and innovated in different parts of the world. So you're seeing tons of healthcare technology, which I think is amazing. Think about how many billions of people around the world have never had access to good healthcare. So if digitization of telemedicine, digital banking, things like that, the faster that flows into these emerging market economies, the better in my opinion, but it's a little bit

of both. Yeah. Well, I want to go through a couple of the investments you guys have made. Maybe you can just kind of tell us the story of how you guys came across them. And I think we'll pull out some of the themes and experiences and lessons learned. The first is Wish, which is now a massive shopping company. Maybe you can tell us that story. Yeah, it's a great story because Peter, who started the company and is the CEO today, really saw something that most people didn't see. We met Peter in early 2014 and he was sort of pivoting out of an ad-driven business and into an e-commerce business. And what Peter saw and subsequently what my partner Han saw was he was creating a mobile e-commerce platform for the mass consumer. So you think about in the

US, we have Dollar General, we have Dollar Store, we have Kohl's, we have Walmart. We have all these businesses, which by the way, are hundreds of billions in annual sales that cater to the mass market consumer, which would sort of be like middle income and down. And the venture capital community at that time was predominantly catering to upper income consumers and saying, gee, I want to target iPhone users, average household income of 100K a year. That's a great demographic. They're going to spend a ton of money on the internet. And the thing that Han saw in 2014 was similar to what Taobao has done in China. Taobao is part of Alibaba. It's the largest e-commerce platform in the world. Cater to the mass market, right? Offer everything from $2

products to $200 products. But the high end actually took a lot more time, right? Now, Today, we have Opendoor in real estate and Carvana in cars, and the high end is actually getting discovered. But Peter built a $10 billion plus company on the back of the kind of middle to low end consumer. And that market is enormous, right? I mean, he calls it Amazon subprime. So these are people who really aren't even at the point in their life or their career where they can afford to shop on Amazon, which actually doesn't have the cheapest products. So I think that idea of catering to the mass market, and oh, by the way, a huge percentage of their business is outside the US. So understanding that people around the world want to shop, not everybody makes $100,000 a year and sends their kids to private school in Atherton, is a unique aspect of our business, right? To be able to see beyond the demographic, that high-end demographic that a lot of venture

capitalists and investors play in. And of course, now you've got companies like Affirm, you've got obviously Square, you've got a lot of companies that have started to go after that more mass market consumer, but that's a relatively recent trend. Even the SMB tech economy that Square and BigCommerce and Shopify are playing in, that really started in 2010. Before that, nobody in tech really went after SMB or even the mass market consumer. That's a relatively recent trend.

Yeah. You also invested in Coinbase, which is kind of a counter trend. When that company started, there was nobody really talking about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, especially not in the mainstream media. Can you talk about where did you guys see that one and kind of what was the thesis? Yeah, I think, you know, at the time, this was probably 2016 or 17. You know, one of the things when we talk about being sector focused and betting on trends, obviously, crypto, at the time was becoming a very big trend and a very big topic. And so we spent some time doing some research trying to figure out, understand the technology, understand how it could play out. Obviously, we had a global point of view. So we saw what was happening in Singapore, Hong Kong and China, in addition to the US. And we, you know, to be fair, we were you have folks like USV and Andreessen Horowitz and other funds that were ahead of the curve on

that and did very well investing in Bitcoin and elsewhere. So we weren't early to that trend. But we made a couple of small investments in some new projects and said, look, one of the things we do believe will happen if Bitcoin and crypto are here to stay is Coinbase will do very well. And I think that turned out to be a good bet. I wish we had invested more. Famous last words of every investor. But we met with Brian, just were super impressed with him, the management team that he's got there, his approach to taking a very professionalized, regulated point of view in an industry that at the time, if you remember, was not, it was sort of like anti-regulation. And so for him to sort of take an approach where he said, look, I assume this is going to be

regulated by the SEC. I assume we're going to have to comply with US banking laws. I think it was very smart and was ahead of the time. And now you've got other exchanges that have done the same thing. But, you know, and he's gone on to build, I think, what will be a very valuable company. Yeah, it's, I think we're seeing a lot of companies who took the opposite approach right now, kind of paying for those sins, right? Whether it's a regulator stepping in, or just kind of all sorts of issues. So I tend to agree that that approach, which by the way, and you know, was such short, was so short sighted, right? Like, like, the economy is that if you read, like any book on politics, politics and money are very tied together, right? So, you know, one of the reasons

the EU broke up was those countries lost control of their own currency. Greece suddenly realized it had a huge problem when it couldn't value its own currency. The ability to control currency and manage the flow of monetary supply around the world. Now, we're in a little bit of a weird situation right now where the US is printing money like drunken sailors, but that is a huge part of the way politics and the economy work. I think I would love to see over time crypto and Bitcoin, because of the way the technology works and democratizing access to it, I think it'd be great to have it be part of the economy and part of the monetary system over time. But that's not going to happen outside of government. Yeah, I just don't believe it will. I tend to agree with

you. Another company that is kind of going up against some incumbents and trying to disrupt things is Lambda School. There's obviously some regulation involved there, but also just some innovation kind of what was that story? So, you know, one of the things I've learned in venture over time is when you get people that are going after really big market opportunities with asymmetric ideas. I'll give you a couple of examples. Airbnb, asymmetric idea. People are going to sleep on couches. People are like, what? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. But in hindsight, we look at it and they're now bigger than Marriott and Hyatt. You look at Uber or Lyft, asymmetric idea going after a massive existing industry. Those businesses could be

zeros. Like, I think that's the thing when people are critical of like an Elon Musk or a magic leap or whatever, it's like, if you don't try the asymmetric idea, you never change the industry. And so when they don't work, people think you're an idiot, but when they do work, people are like, oh yeah, of course Airbnb. It's like, go talk to Brian and Joe and Nate 10 years ago. Like nobody thought that was an obvious idea. And I kind of, I would put Austin in that same category. Like he's trying to change the way the education system works. And he's saying, why should I have to spend 200 grand to go get a CS degree at Stanford to get a job at Google. That just doesn't make any sense. By the way, when I come out of it, I owe 200 grand. The way the whole system works is the

individual takes all the risk. And so what he did was basically created this concept. He didn't really create the concept, but he capitalized on the concept of the ISA, which is basically saying, look, I'll cover the cost of you getting educated and I'll take the bet that you're going to get a job. And when you do get a job, pay me back. But it's like the opposite of the student loan model, which by the way, we now have like one of the biggest crisis in America with all these people carrying student loans. Imagine if all those people had ISAs. The market would be completely different. And so, you know, I think it's a good trend and you're seeing some like Purdue has adopted an ISA model. So what Austin's really trying to do is one, get rid of the student

loan problem and two, democratize access so that if you're a barista at Starbucks and you want to get a CS degree and go get a job at Google or Amazon or Facebook, you can do that through Lambda school. Now you have to work your ass off and it's hard. One of the things that he figured out along the way, you got to make it hard. If I'm going to take the risk on you to get a job, I've got to make it hard to ensure that you've got the grit to actually work your ass off and go get that job and do well once you have that job. And so there's this really kind of mutually beneficial relationship where like, I need you to work hard to get the job. And when you do, you'll pay me back. And so it's just, you know, it's one of these asymmetric bets in a huge

category. If he's right, it's going to be a massive Airbnb square type company, but it's a really hard business to build. And by the way, you're going after an industry where there's a lot of entrenched interests who don't want you to succeed. And so when you see negative media coverage or commentary about his business model, oftentimes that comes from sources that may have an entrenched interest in seeing his business not succeed. But one of the things that I always tell people, I have the best job in the world. One of the reasons is I get to take risks on people like Austin and say, Hey, if you get this right, it's a 10, 20, 30, $40 billion company. And by the way, it changes our system. And if you get it wrong, that's a bummer, but that's what we get paid to

do. It would suck if it's, if it's a zero, but like, that's our job, go take those risks and try and fund those ideas that can change these, change these markets. And then, you know, just like, I mean, whether it's Austin or Garrett Lord at handshake or a lyric slice, or, you know, any of the people that we back, like these people are incredible, like superhuman type people. And they're not all Elon Musk, who's the superhuman of superhumans, but it's just incredibly inspiring to meet with these people that are literally creating the jobs that are powering our country. Absolutely. You mentioned Slice. And I know that you guys have this big thesis around SMB tech. Maybe talk a little bit about that thesis in general,

and then we can use Slice as an example. So if you look back, and I wrote a post about this a few years ago, if you look back 10 years ago, there was basically one company in SMB tech that was into it. And today there's probably 40 companies that we would put into that bucket that are valued at about half a trillion dollars. Shopify is probably the most obvious example. It's valued at a hundred billion, but you've got Wix and Square and RingCentral and 8x8 and BigCommerce. And there's a whole bunch of companies that their entire universe is powering small business. And oh, by the way, in small business, 60% of America works for a small business. It's 40% of US GDP. So we need small business to be successful. And that whole economy

was created for three reasons. One, AWS. AWS launched in 2005. So suddenly made it cheap and easy to power computing. You didn't have to host your own servers. Two, you had the iPhone. So your typical small business owner circa 2008 didn't have a computer with an internet connection in their shop. They got an iPhone and all of a sudden they did. And the third thing was the integration of FinTech, right? So Stripe and Braintree launched around that same timeframe. Those three factors came together to make it feasible to serve a small business customer for a hundred or $200 a month in a way that you couldn't do five years earlier. And that has now powered a whole generation of companies that are being built on that technology. And if you just look at those

companies over the last 12 to 18 months, they've been ripping, right? As an investor, if you own that index of companies, you've done very, very, very well. And the reason is people have figured out that when our economy reboots, we come out of coronavirus and the economy reboots. I just wrote a post called the small business economy will power the reboot of the economy and it'll be powered by technology. When we come out of that, small business is going to power it. It has to. Part of it is out of necessity. As of today, there are 40% more applications for new businesses in our country than there were a year ago. So one year ago today, same genre. And by the way, we were in a booming economy a year ago. 40% more people have applied for new companies this

year. The reason is obviously a lot of them lost their job, which is not good. The positive out of that is a lot of those folks will go on and never go back and get a normal job again. They'll have some great small business. And that business will be built on technology. They'll have a website on Wix. They'll have POS with Square. They'll use marketing from HubSpot. They'll have a phone system from RingCentral. So those companies I just think are not only hugely valuable today, but have an extremely bright future. As that 40% of US GDP, more and more of those companies move on to technology. And so you mentioned Slice, which is near and dear to my heart because I love pizza. I know you do too. And one of my life's missions is to get you off of Domino's

and onto great local pizza. But if you look at what Aaliyah has done with Slice, And he's third generation pizza, right? He grew up in a pizza family. He eats, breathes. He was probably, instead of a binky in his mouth, he probably had pepperoni. But what he saw was pizza merchants, he had the rise of Domino's, which was basically building a tech stack. Now, 80% of Domino's orders are mobile and web.

Your average small business merchant in the pizza industry, and by the way, there's 32,000 in America, had zero technology. Most of them don't even have a point of sale system. And so Aaliyah said, I'm going to go build that technology for them, the mobile and web ordering. And then eventually I'll be able to power their business with marketing and capital and a whole bunch of other resources to help them grow, just like Domino's helps its franchisees grow. So that business, I think we publicly announced the other day, is now eclipsed a billion in sales. And all of those are sales going to small and local merchants. But what's great about that is the momentum in that business. Alir won't like me saying this, but I bet you we'll eclipse $2 billion within 12 months.

So it took 10 years to get to the first billion. The next billion will take 12 months, which is how a lot of these businesses work. So it's a really cool story. He's doing amazing things for small merchants and a company we're really proud of. and what's so interesting about slice right it's not only one a fantastic idea two from an execution standpoint they've obviously done a great job but three is uh it's very similar to shopify's like arm the rebels right like basically give the tools to the people who are going up against the incumbents and he doesn't say it right but it's basically what he's doing for these uh

local pizzerias is saying hey look you don't have the ability to ever match from a technology standpoint what these large people are doing um and what's really interesting i was thinking through it the other day is, uh, there's a Starbucks, uh, around the corner from me in New York. Right. And everyone's always like all the big corporation. And I was in there and it's actually a franchise owned one. And so this is, you know, literally the husband and the wife are working on like a Sunday morning, you know, the whole thing. And so they have a very different kind of entrepreneurship experience just because they've got Starbucks behind them, right? They've got marketing taken care of. They've got a technology stack. They've got a lot of the

systems in place, but they still have to run a business, right? They still have to try to get people to come in and and you can just tell like that starbucks in particular has certain touches to it that maybe it probably feels authentic probably feels right it's just a little different right and and frankly it's um it's the belief that like that person cares probably more than the manager at the corporate uh uh store now what slice seems to be doing is the exact same thing it's just empowering everything it's just not under one brand right but it's saying hey we're gonna give you all the same things we're gonna give you the systems we're gonna give you the technology we're gonna help you with marketing like we're gonna do everything that if you were

a franchisee would get only now you can do it under your own brand. You own your own business and we're just simply a vendor, right? Yeah. And you capture the majority of the economics. You're not paying a franchise fee to start. You're not paying royalty. So Lear calls it the reverse franchise, right? So it's sort of like the way Uber approached the transportation industry that said, look, we don't need to own the drivers. We're going to let them own their own business and help them generate cashflow. So yeah, we're going to existing merchants or new merchants powering their business with technology. We're also a marketplace. So we drive, you know, last night we ordered slice in my house. We ordered from a, uh, a local merchant

called Bella Roma. I've never been in their store, but I go on slice every few weeks and we place an order. And of course we have four kids and we always have friends over. So we eat a lot of pizza. So it's a marketplace. It's also a technology element as well. And then I think the, you know, one of the hidden secrets of the whole food delivery industry is, you know, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, those guys take as much as 25% or 30% of the order value. That does not work for merchants. I mean, the hidden secret of that industry is merchants, your average restaurant merchant nets 5% at the end of the year.

So how can you pay out 30% to somebody who's delivering the food? You just can't. And so what we're seeing now is a gradual transition of those merchants off of those third-party delivery platforms onto Slice. And I think that's a trend that you'll see for the next few years. And, and yeah, I think Slice will be a very big company, but one of the things I love about it is Aaliyah is authentic. He's not some guy who was in business school and was like, Oh, the pizza industry is a big industry. I'm going to go build some technology. He is like, like you walk into a

pizzeria with Aaliyah, they're fricking, they're like hugging him and bringing him the special. And you know, he's, he's, he's one of them. And so, yeah, that back to your point about the arm, the rebels, we've got Slice in that space. We've got big commerce and e-commerce. We've got Brightwheel in the pre-K education space. I backed a company called Belong Home is doing it in the residential real estate space. So this whole idea of like arm the small business merchant to help them compete with the big guy, I think is super powerful. And it's also, I mean, one of the challenges we're going to have coming out of this economy we're in right now is you've got your Starbucks, your Shake Shack, your Chipotle, your whatever that have cash, right? So your Shake

Shack with a billion dollars in their balance sheet, they can do things in terms of transforming their restaurants and to pick up and delivery and take away that your average small merchant can't. And so we got to find a way. And it's a combination of not only technology, but capital. And one of the things we've lost in our country is the small regional banks. The Wells Fargo's and B of A's have gobbled up all the small regional banks. And so the guy that used to sit down in the street and lend you or I money when we wanted to start a business is gone. What you're seeing is that get replaced with square capital. We'll eventually have slice capital. Shopify has Shopify capital. So you're seeing the technology companies create a financing

arm or partner with a third party to offer financing these merchants. So that is a super positive trend. Yeah. One of the other trends that you've been pretty adamant about, and I think founders are starting to wake up to, and I know that there's a couple of other venture capitalists in Silicon Valley now that are voicing, hey, this was a horrible idea. It was this idea of like staying private longer, right? And I know that you've been a big proponent, many of your companies have gone public earlier than, you know, kind of the trend. Talk a little bit just about how you've thought about private companies getting into the public markets. Are there certain thresholds or kind of milestones that, okay, now's a good time to start thinking about that? And then

just what the advantages of being a publicly traded company are versus a private company? Yeah, so I am a big believer. I think companies should be going public earlier. If you look at back in the nineties, the average company going public had about a half a billion dollar market cap, 500 million. I mean, Amazon's market cap when went public was 500 million. So the argument that you can't go public as a small company and be successful, I just like, there's just no data to support that. Um, one of the greatest companies of all time went public at 500. So, um, and so then we got into this mode, you know, over the last five to seven years, partially because of the massive influx of capital from firms like soft bank saying to entrepreneurs, Hey, don't go

public. I'll give you $500 million. Just continue to grow as a private company. And look, there was some validity to that. It was easy to take the money. It didn't require a lot of effort. It didn't require a lot of disclosure. And oh, by the way, you didn't have to comply with public company reporting and accounting requirements. And it's a post-0809 reform. It's a $2, $3 million effort to go public. So it's not trivial. It's not cheap. But the flip side of that is I think what it did was it also fostered a lot of undisciplined growth. People took that capital and spent it in ways that they probably wouldn't have if they had had a public board or public shareholders. Frankly, it eroded a lot of value and it took on a lot more dilution than they needed

to. That doesn't help us as shareholders. It doesn't help the founders. I think a lot of people in hindsight are looking back and saying, gosh, I probably could have built this company with two or 300 million less and, oh, by the way, be public today and trading at a really healthy multiple if I had just kind of taken the time to put in place all those pieces along the way. So, you know, look, we're very lucky. We've had eight companies go public in the last 12 months. We've got another four or five that'll get out in the next five or six months. Those are companies that we invested in, you know, six to nine years ago and have spent the last 12 to 18 months preparing to be public companies. And there are things you have to do. You need an audit chair

on your board. You need, you know, you need audits from a big four accounting firm. You need investor relations and kind of accounting and finance infrastructure internally that can handle it. But I just think it builds more disciplined companies. And where the narrative comes from of it sucks to be public, I'm on the board of a public company. I don't talk to any public CEOs that are like, yeah, it really sucks to be running this $20 billion company. It's just a false narrative. And so I hope that trend continues. The one wrinkle in the conversation right now is the whole SPAC trend and whether we will have some companies that go public prematurely that otherwise wouldn't have gone public through the normal IPO process. And I think that could color

people's, you know, they'll say, oh gosh, this company didn't do well as a public company. It's like, well, they kind of took an unconventional path to get there. We have a process set up where a bank vets the company. Now we could use some better technology in the pricing methodology for IPOs, which Bill Gurley has talked quite extensively about. But I just think if that trend reverses and we see companies go public earlier, it'll be better for everybody. It's better for shareholders. It's better for the founders. It's way better for employees. Give your employees' liquidity sooner is better than later. Then the other thing it's good for is the economy. Letting more people participate in the increase of value of these companies earlier

is a good thing. If I can take a company public at 2 billion like Square, or I think 2.9 when it went out, and it goes to 70, think about all the people that have benefited from the rise in value of Square versus Square staying private for five years and being worth 50 billion, and then only increasing in value and 20 billion in the public markets capturing that value. So it's just good all around. And oh, by the way, as a public company, you put permanent capital on your balance sheet, you lock in job creation for decades to come. It's just good for the economy overall. And we've also seen, I think, some companies that tried to go through the traditional IPO process and kind of fall apart under the scrutiny, right? And so we work. Exactly. And so

I think that part of it is like the SPACs definitely help people get there earlier and quicker and cheaper and all this stuff. But there is something to be said about the process works in terms of making sure that the best companies that are structured the right way, get out into the market. And I think that that's one of the things that people always forget is like the stock market is, is a pretty good referee, right? Yes, sure. It gets inflated at times like that was my point, when people were talking about a bubble a year ago, I said, Look at WeWork, the market was efficient, it didn't get public, people realized it wasn't what they thought it was. And, you know, the other, the other side of that is I do think there are some SPACs that will be successful,

just like, just, just like IPOs, just like anything else. I think there's a handful of managers. You know, you look at what Chamath and Adam are doing. You look at what Mark Stodd's doing at Dragoneer or Brad Gerstner at Altimeter. I mean, there's a handful of people who are professional investors that know what they're doing, who I think will find great companies to, to take public. Then there are another, you know, the other 80, 90% that I just, I just don't, I don't think there are that many great private companies that are going to choose that as an option. So I do think there's a little bit of investor arbitrage there for your listeners. I do think if you pick good managers and you can buy a SPAC, buy shares in a SPAC before a deal

gets announced, if it's a high quality manager, you can make some money. Yeah, absolutely. One of the ideas that you've had, if we switch to just Silicon Valley in general, is this idea of the resilience of Silicon Valley and how that's changed over the last two decades or so. Maybe you explain kind of your thought process there and how you see that? Well, look, this has been a tough year. I mean, pick your demographic, right? If you work in a factory and you got laid off, if you're a kid that's not getting to go to school right now, if you work in a tech company and you're working from home, it's been a rough year. And I think one of my hopes is that mental health becomes sort of a more acceptable topic for people to talk about because it's a very real

issue that I think this year in particular, and I think we're going to have some lasting effects from what we're going through right now. But having said that, what I have seen in our portfolio companies in particular is incredible. And I was here for the dot-com bubble, 9-11. I was here for 08-09. And those were like big punches where people went down for a while, like companies laid off staff. You felt like you were in a recession. And what I think we saw this year was tech companies in particular rebound very quickly. One, they were prepared for it. So the CEO said, okay, I got a pandemic. I'm going to deal with it. Very compassionate about dealing with their employees, which I just, we took a lot of pride and even big companies like Salesforce and Twitter

and Facebook that did the same thing. And then I think people were, we're in an age today where we have Zoom, we have Slack, we have messaging and iPhones and all this technology. I mean, can you imagine if this happened 10 years ago? You and I wouldn't be having this conversation. Like there was no Zoom. We would have to set up some kind of weird like Cisco WebEx. And so we kind of take for granted how seamlessly we all transition into this work from home mode. But I've just been really heartwarmed.

You know, look at all the companies that have come out and announced very pro, you know, hey, take time off for your kids, take time to teach your kids, take time to help your kids with school. It just feels like to me, people have been pretty compassionate and then just resilient. And one of the reasons why I think the market has bounced back for tech stocks so quickly is a lot of people are seeing what I'm seeing, which is, in fact, I tweeted out this morning a chart that Ryan Dennehy, one of our CEOs, tweeted out in May, where he said, I'm predicting the Nike recovery. And it was like the swoosh logo where Q2 was bad, and then boom, things took

off. And that's what we're seeing. For the majority of our companies, Q3 was a record quarter, and Q4 is looking really, really good. So I'm very optimistic heading into next year. We obviously have some huge challenges as a country. But I'll tell you what we're seeing between the lines, tech companies are doing well. A lot of small businesses are doing well. Try to buy a used car, try to buy a bike, try to buy an RV, try to buy a boat. There's a segment of the economy that is booming. You've obviously got a segment like travel and some others that are not doing well, but I'm pretty optimistic heading into next year. Yeah. I want to move around the world and a couple of other geographies? What are you seeing in India and China specifically?

So India is one of those markets where people have been predicting a boom for 20 years. And the country, one of the things that people compare China and India, and you really had two very different approaches over the last 20 years. China took a very pro-capitalism government helping to drive the economy approach. India did not do as much of that. And so one of the reasons why we're bullish on India today versus maybe five or 10 years ago is you have Reliance Jio that has been rolling out this basically free wireless network all across the country and literally hundreds of millions of people coming into the wireless economy that were not there a year or two ago. And so that's an unlock that not a lot of people outside the

country understand. But if you look at the money that's going in, there's literally been billions and billions of billions of dollars that have gone into Reliance Geo from U.S. companies as well as other companies, that is a signal of what's coming. And we believe that that is going to unlock a whole new part of the Indian economy with telemedicine, digital finance, e-commerce, all the pieces of the puzzle that have been thriving in our economy and in China. And so we're very optimistic about the road ahead, partially because of that. I think in China, the interesting thing about China, obviously, they were hit with the coronavirus in January, but their economy today is basically back, right? Kids are in school, people are dining

out, travel has rebounded back to pre-pandemic levels. Obviously, they took a very aggressive approach to how they dealt with the pandemic, much more aggressive than we did, but it worked. And so one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about the US is I think eventually we didn't take that approach, but I am confident that eventually we will beat it. And when we do, I think you're going to see a booming economy in the US, right? I mean, think about all you and I, we're going to be going to sporting events and concerts and traveling and the amount of money that's going to be unlocked in our economy next year or in 2022, hopefully it's next year. I think it's going to be pretty incredible. We already see that in China.

My advice for investors generally is if you don't have a long position in some international equities that have exposure to China, you shouldn't. It's going to be the world's largest economy. There's a lot of reasons why it will continue to thrive. You've got entire categories like healthcare that are still really early in that market. And there's just so much room for innovation that it just is smart to have some allocation there. Absolutely. We recently saw Paystack, a company in Nigeria on the continent of Africa, get acquired by Stripe. What are you guys seeing in any of the African countries? So we, to be fair, we don't have a presence there. And frankly, don't, you know, it's just like we always tell LPs, like we've got 90 people in the

firm, six GPs covering the markets we cover is a lot. Trying to add a new one would be hard. But there are some, I interviewed Maya who runs Ingress Capital. Amazing. I did a live podcast with her. She's incredible. She's one of the venture capitalists that's doing a lot of cool things in Africa. And she shared, I highly recommend people listen to it because she shared some amazing stats with me. I think something like 50 or 60% of the population in Africa is under the age of 35. Unbelievable. So if you just assume that that demographic is going to have access to mobile devices and eventually have rising incomes, that is a pretty compelling market to be in. We're just not there today, but definitely listen to the

podcast of Maya. She's incredible. One of the smartest people I've ever listened to, period, but in particular on Africa. Yeah, that's awesome. You've been investing for a long time, both in the public and private markets. What would you say are your biggest lessons learned over the years, either by your biggest wins or your biggest losses? Yeah, you know, it's funny. One of my biggest lessons learned is when the market goes down, it will eventually go up. And I remember I was talking to Ryan Dennehy back in March, I think it was like March 15th or 14th or 16th. And, you know, we were sort of having a question about layoffs and raising capital and everybody was pretty panicked at the time, if you remember in our country. And I said, look, Ryan,

I don't know whether this pandemic lasts for three months or three years, but I do know on the other side, things are going to be good. Now, I don't know if that's 2025 or June, but based on what I saw in 08, 09, and what I saw in 2001, on the other side, the US economy, and I'm not the only one to say this, Warren Buffett said it, don't bet against the American economy. I invested more money in March than I've invested in the last five years combined. Now, I didn't know when it would pay off. It turned out it paid off very quickly, but that was a lesson that I learned from 08, 09. I didn't have any money in 08, 09. But if you just look at the cloud space, which is Salesforce and others, there's been $4 trillion of market value created in the last 10

years in the cloud space since 2009. So if you just threw a dart at the wall and invested in every software company that was public in 2009 and bought every IPO since then, you'd be one of the richest people on the planet. So I think that lesson is super informative, right? Just don't bet against the American economy. Pick sectors and trends that you think have a five, 10-year horizon and invest in them and don't try and time the market. That's number one. Back to your point about Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin peaked 20,000, dropped. It's back at 11. If you had dollar cost averaged and you made money, I heard you telling Jim Cramer that. Same thing happens in the market. And so if you have names you like or companies you like or trends that you believe in,

buy those equities. And when they drop out a little bit more, right, you don't have to go all in day one. But you know, like I've owned Salesforce since it went public. You know, I wish I owned more, I think only put in like $1,500 because I didn't have a lot of money back then. But it's been a good one to own. And so if you know, and there are companies coming public today, that are still early in their lifecycle, right? You look at a Twilio or a Square or an Okta, and those are sort of four or five years ago. There are versions of those companies coming public today that investors can buy and say, look, it might look really expensive today. If it drops because of election turmoil or market turmoil, maybe I'll add some more.

But over time, you'll make money in the long run buying those companies. And in particular, I'm super bullish on software. And if you want to just be simple, go long QQQ and WCLD. Wisdom Cloud just tracks the Bessemer Software Index. QQQ obviously is the NASDAQ. Just buy of those two things. You'll make money over the next 10 years. And then the last one I think we've all learned as investors is let your winners run. I mean, the value creation that has happened post-IPO for tech companies over the last decade is just astonishing, right? 80% of the value for companies happens post-IPO. So a lot of people in the venture industry used to distribute at the lockup, right? Six months after a company goes public, lockup expires, they distribute all

shares. And then all the value gets created. And so what a lot of venture firms have learned is, hey, let's not distribute the lockup. Let's maybe take our time because so much value is going to get created post IPO because companies put capital on their balance sheet. Growth rates in many cases are accelerating. I tweeted out yesterday, growth rates are actually accelerating for software companies. And then they get better. The branding gets stronger, they get better. And then if you look at like what Jeff Lawson's done at Twilio, Jeff has been using his currency to acquire companies. He acquired SendGrid, and then he made another acquisition just recently. He's building a powerhouse. I'm super long Twilio. It's one of my largest positions. It has been

almost since the company went public. I believe in him. I believe in the market they're in. Then I see him making moves that say, okay, he's not going to just sit back and sit on his ass and watch the stock price go up. He's going to be aggressive and try and build a category-defining company. There are others like that that are coming to market. I was telling, I had a bunch of conversations with our LPs recently, and they said, what do you think the next five years looks like. And I said, guys, I have to be honest with you. I've been here for 25 years. It's hard to not be the most bullish I've ever been on investing in technology. Like you talk about coming out of an economic pandemic. You look at the SMB tech boom. You look at the rise of incomes around the

world. You look at digital banking, digital cash, digital healthcare, like all these incredible trends. And then, oh, by the way, there's going to be a whole class of entrepreneurs that spin up new kinds of companies out of this pandemic that we haven't even thought of yet. Like, how, how can you not be bullish right now? Yeah. And I think that it's really the pandemic has just accelerated trends that were already underway, right? It was like all this technology stuff, people knew, Hey, this is going to be valuable, but you're literally just seeing people now forced to adopt it. And that's part of the acceleration, the growth trends, right? But it's also, uh, I think now what you're doing is it's kind of the creativity comes out of

constraints, right? And so people are being forced to, Hey, I got to get a job, right? I got, I got to solve one of my problems. And that's where you see a bunch of company creation as well. Yeah, and think about all the actions like people tried telemedicine for the first time. We went from 5% of people that tried telemedicine to the 40% in 90 days. Why? Because they couldn't go to the doctor. You had people who, the e-commerce penetration in the US went from 16% to 40%. Why? Because people couldn't go into stores. You know, you have, think about all the people who've bought home fitness equipment, a Peloton or a Tonal or whatever, like some of them will lose interest post pandemic and say, yeah, I'm going to go back to a 24 hour fitness. But a lot of them won't, a very high percentage of them won't say, hey, you know what? I love working out at home. You're going to have a whole new category of entrepreneurs in the fitness category, I believe, right? Yoga instructors and fitness

instructors who were like, why am I making 15 bucks an hour to go teach at a fitness shop when I can teach my own classes on zoom and make 10 grand a month. So like there's a, there's an entire economy of entrepreneurs that are going to sprout up to your point out of necessity. Like they didn't have a choice. Like it sucks that we had to shock our economy the way we did. And it's been brutal, devastating, but I think out of it, there's a whole wave of entrepreneurship. That's going to just be, and back to that point I made earlier, 40% more new business applications this year than last year. Like that's crazy. That's, that's astonishing. You've got a shirt on that says go long and uh that couldn't be a more fitting uh thought i think uh kind of mantra

given uh your bullishness but but i think that the key here really is the data supports a lot of this and um if you kind of believe that uh humans will constantly improve and push forward the innovation like being long is the right way to look at every sector yeah and and and i think it's you know we we have these shirts because we tell entrepreneurs we want to go long right we want to back entrepreneurs that want to build enduring companies that will be very large. But I think the same thing is true in the market. I had a friend of mine text me last week. He's like, hey, do you think I should sell my Zoom? It's had a big run. I'm like, I don't know. I'm not selling. I'm super bullish on Eric. I think the market they're in is way bigger than people think.

And I think he'll innovate in ways that people haven't thought of. And then, of course, this week, they came out and announced a whole platform with Zaps. And you could see an entire economy. Some people are comparing it to the iPhone app store. What if he creates the next iteration of the iPhone app store and it becomes a trillion dollar company. I mean, how many people sold Amazon at a hundred billion and were like, gosh, this thing is crazy. I mean, you can't build a hundred billion dollar retailer because they didn't see AWS coming. Well, AWS alone is worth a trillion dollars today. So I just think when you are along with these exceptional entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks and you give them capital, once they go public, they have capital

to work with, holy crap, hold those positions. I mean, unless you have to sell, you know, and in particular, if tax rates go up and you're paying a higher tax rate to sell than you are today, I think you're going to see a lot of people owning these, these names for years and making a lot of money in tech stocks. I just, multiples could compress, but like, we also have to remember like in the software space, everybody goes, oh my God, the multiples are crazy. I'm like, well, yeah, the multiples are based on the forecast and the forecasts are low. they're all beating the numbers. So if you go back and adjust those multiples, they don't look that crazy. So and then just to think about the upside of the economy over the

next few years, of course, we have like, you know, geopolitical risks, there's currency risk, we're taking on a crazy amount of debt, we have elections, there's a lot of uncertainty to be nervous about. But like at a ground level, man, I'm pretty bullish. I love it. I agree. I asked same two questions, everyone before I finish up, and you'll get to ask me one first is uh, what's the most important book you've ever read? Uh, man, I, I love so many, uh, books about entrepreneurs, but, um, I would go back to one. My dad gave me when I was a teenager, the seven habits of highly successful people. I just think it's like, it's super basic advice, but it grounds you. And there are things in there that you'll learn and live by the rest of your life. It's

timeless because it works. Right. And it's just, there's so many times when I think back to, there's an example in that book of, you know, a guy on a, on a subway or a bus and his kids are acting up and, you know, people around him are looking at him like your kids are, you know, we are a bad parent. And then somebody realizes that his wife had just passed away. And so having the compassion to think about what other people are going through, particularly in a time like we're in right now, it's just a, it's, it's a timeless lesson, right? We have people out here preaching all these things like do this, do this, do this, but they don't understand the circumstances that other people are in. And so there's just, there's just a lot of timeless lessons in that

book. Yeah, I love that. The second question is more fun. Aliens, believer or non-believer? I think, you know, if you think back to like Christopher Columbus landing in America and thinking that he was in India, like throughout history, we've underestimated what was beyond us. And so I think the idea that we think we're the only ones is just kind of crazy. I don't, you know, I don't believe there's like aliens in my neighborhood, but like, I do believe there are other life forms out there. And so I think you'd be crazy if you don't believe that, then you kind of don't believe in research and technology and science and all the things that have been progressing our world forward. I don't know. What about you?

Oh, I definitely believe. I was going to be shocked if somebody who believes so much in the technology and innovation didn't believe in aliens, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't think I'm hanging out with them next to them at the grocery store, but I think we'd be incredibly naive to think we figured it all out. Yeah. And I also think it's not only hard to understand kind of what's possible it's also just hard for us to fathom the things we do know right i always say like everyone you know thinks of aliens as something that is and let's say in space there's a lot of stuff we don't know about our own oceans right so when you kind of like put that in relationship then you think okay we kind of have this idea of how big the galaxy is for example

right but like we just know it's big but when you hear the numbers you're like okay like i have no you know kind of comparison point to understand how big that really is right and so when you start to hear things like um i think it was uh neil degrasse uh tyson said that like in order to reach some parts of uh certain planets you would basically have to put children on like you know newborn children on a spaceship send them teach them everything while they're in flight then they would have to have like grandkids at some point and then those grandkids actually like reach a planet right and it's like okay that seems pretty far like those rockets seem to go pretty fast so right it's just kind of crazy and i'm not willing to go as far as elon musk saying we're

living in a simulation although i do love his theory um i just think it's crazy to assume like if you assume we figured everything out like that's a that's a tough way to go through life yeah depressing like be an optimist like nobody thought we could land a rocket we could shoot a rocket into space and land it on a little platform in the ocean and then he did it everybody's like oh yeah like that took what 50 years of space travel to figure that out and then somebody figured it out. It's like, I don't know. It's part of what makes life great. There's new things you discover and learn. Do I want to go hang out with aliens? Not necessarily, but do I believe there are people out there? Yes. I think I see eye to eye with you on all of that. You could

ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me? You meet some incredible people through this process and doing all the conversations that you have. What's one big takeaway you've had over the last year or two from some of the smartest people you've interacted with? And I've listened to a lot of your episodes. I mean, just incredible, diverse personalities that you've had on from Dave Portnoy to Jim Cramer to Michael Saylor. What pops into your mind, something you've learned from all of that? So takeaway, maybe you didn't have a year or two ago. Here's the scary part is it's not so much things that maybe are groundbreaking. It's almost like a return to the basics, right? So it's things like, uh, the most successful people work their

asses off. Like I have yet to have somebody come on and be like, Hey, guess what? Like, here's the secret. You know, I did this one thing. Now I'm a billionaire. There's not a single person who, who, uh, who's done that. Um, so kind of hard work, uh, to, I would say, uh, very much like original thinkers or kind of first principles thinking, um, is very clear when somebody, uh, has been able to find opportunity by using that. A third one, and we were talking about this earlier is like, just like the open-mindedness is very refreshing. And I'm actually surprised usually by how open-minded, how intellectually curious the most successful people are. They are very much, I know nothing, teach me, right? And then, you know, Kramer was a good

example. There's many others. And I think that maybe the perception of these people would be like, oh, they think they know everything, but it's actually the exact opposite. And the last thing is how compassionate people are. A lot of the enjoyment for me in the podcast is actually the time before or after the podcast where I'm talking about other things. And during the episodes, there's a lot of focus on business and investing and the things that people come to the podcast listen for, but before and after I've heard incredible stories of, um, you know, both things that the guest has done for their friends or family or whatever, but also in reverse, like they'll say to me, um, you know, Hey, here's something that somebody that's well-known did

for me. Right. And, uh, you know, it's, um, Patrick O'Shaughnessy on his podcast, uh, the final question, his last question. Yeah. Yeah. It's always like, what's the nicest thing someone's ever done for you and i love that question because uh the stories you hear sometimes i mean there's always like the easy stuff which is like hey my parents right my parents did everything to get me here um but then you hear stories of like whoa that was like way out you know on the side and and um you know we saw uh recently ryan kaldbeck uh came out with uh you know the story and basically, kind of to your point of like, reveals a whole side of, you know, stress and obstacles that he was overcoming that nobody knew about. And I think that, you know, your point just on

you never know what people are going through. You never, you know, you never want to assume things. And it's a hard lesson to kind of keep in the back of your head. But I think that, again, the people who have been the most successful in life, like they've got a pretty good, grounding in those types of principles. The other thing I've learned in the last five years, maybe it's just an age thing, is you can have the flip side of think of something somebody's done for you. Think of something you've done for someone else. You can have an outsized impact on somebody's life by taking an interest, taking some specific actions and following up. And so I've tried to, in the last few years, deliberately pick out a couple of folks

that I thought I could help. And it's been, it's been very rewarding to have them come back to me and say, Hey, I don't know whether you did this intentionally or not, but you made an impact. And I think if more, you know, if, if everyone did that, imagine what would happen. Right. And so I think there are a lot of people who do it naturally, but I think when you're maybe in your mid thirties and early forties, you don't realize, cause you're still in that climbing mode. And now I'm in my later forties. I'm like, well, how do I turn around and help some other folks? Not like I'm, you know, I'm not Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, but like, there are things that I can do that can make. And so when somebody comes back to you and says, Hey, that was huge. It's a,

it's pretty rewarding. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to think about how do we scale that? How do we do more of that? How do we encourage more of that? Cause it's not just philanthropy, right it's behind the scenes actions of actually taking an interest in somebody's life and trying to help them be successful yeah and and i think part of it too is like it's not just a money thing right like that's one piece of it it's literally hey that person who made an introduction for you that person who you know responded to an email with a little bit of advice and and frankly here's the crazy part is i've literally seen um people that i know who pitched a venture capital as kind of an extreme example and the venture capital said this is a dumb idea you're basically wasting

your time for xyz reason like you you're a smart person go work on something else and then they come back and it may take them a month or two to kind of realize it but they go hey you know what like you saved me three years of running down a path that ended up like i would have wasted my time right and there's always this delicate line of like yeah i would say that may not be the way to say it but yeah and and you know again over generalizing kind of the the message right but But it's this thing of understanding and being honest and kind of trying to help people. I think that's the thing, like genuinely trying to help people. The world could do better having more of it, right?

Yeah. And so my thing is, how do we create more of that? How do we get, because I'm amazed how I have a lot of friends who are very successful, who I don't think realize how much they could do for other people. And they're like, oh, yeah, I give money to this. I give money to this and give money to this. But it's like, man, you're so good at what you do. If you just took an interest in three or four people and tried to help them, and most people do. To your point, I think most people do that. But it's just something I've learned. Maybe I'm late to the party. Just taking a conscious interest in some people on an individual basis and trying to help them be successful has been incredibly rewarding. So it kind of goes along Patrick's question of like, you know, not because a lot of people, you know, like we all talk like I didn't, you know, I didn't start at home plate. Like I had a lot of people who helped me be successful. My parents, mentors, advisors, investors, you know, and you sort of look back and I'm always conscious of telling them, hey, thank you. You made a real difference in my life. But then you feel like, okay, I'm now in a position where I got to do that. So how do I consciously pick some people and follow up, right? Not just have that one meeting where you give somebody some advice, but follow up and say, hey, how's it going?

going can i make an intro for you here can i do this you know because that person can then it's just it's such a game changer right opening doors giving somebody that extra shove when they need it is such a game changer i'm going to leave you with one last question is dartmouth basketball ever going to win an ncaa championship ever again or the first one we're we're uh yeah it'd be our first uh it's gonna be tough we we uh no someday someday we'll get back i think um i think i might get the year wrong i think it was 1942 dartmouth was in the final four so i have in my twitter bio you know working to get back to the final four but it's it's been a while uh but no i love the program i love the school and i i hope we can someday i love i love sports i love athletics

i think it teaches you a lot of discipline and and i'm rooting for i'm rooting for the team so I love it. All right, Jeff, let's thank you so much for doing this. I think people are really going to enjoy it. We'll have to do it again in the future. Thanks, man.