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  • 5 months ago

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00:00This is two funds where each serves a purpose. It takes your assets under management to $15 billion. And I
00:08mean this, Justin, with respect.
00:10Your firm's gone a little under the radar. And now here you are, arriving at this moment.
00:16I mean, I think we've just been focused on investing. So maybe I think within the venture ecosystem, people know
00:22us.
00:22I want to talk about one of the funds in particular. I find this very interesting. The idea of some
00:27of the capital is that you offer liquidity to founders that you back, their employees in different forms.
00:35Why specifically earmark some money for that? So if you kind of rewind the clock, we started the firm about
00:4116 years ago.
00:42And, you know, our thesis was that companies were going to stay private longer. And the challenge of companies staying
00:49private longer was going to be that founders, executives, employees were going to need liquidity.
00:54Like working capital.
00:56I mean, look, if you start a company when you're 25 and then, you know, you end up being 35,
01:01right? Like your life is different. Maybe you want to buy a house, right?
01:04In the same way, like all these companies need more growth capital, right? And so we've seen the availability of
01:09that expand in the private markets.
01:11And so, you know, our general view is if companies stay private longer, there are going to be more opportunities
01:15to invest in them.
01:16And opportunities, boy, did you take. You first invested in SpaceX, for example, in 2010. You've written two dozen checks,
01:24it tells me, into SpaceX since.
01:26How much now do you own a SpaceX if you're able to do that?
01:32I mean, I think at this point, we're I think we own well over $10 billion. So it's a it's
01:36a pretty big position for us. And we've had a lot of conviction in the business over the last, you
01:41know, 15, 16 years.
01:42So, yeah, we're we're excited. I mean, if you were in in 2010, what sort of returns can the LPs
01:47be expecting on this?
01:50Oh, gosh. Some of those some of those investments, I think, are are probably like 100x investments at this point.
01:57So it's interesting. You know, 10 billion dollars of position in SpaceX, I think, would be around one percent of
02:04the company.
02:05Yeah. But you've got a decision to make. So if we're right and Bloomberg's reporting that.
02:09Bloomberg is always right. Bloomberg is very often right.
02:13But we're reporting that SpaceX, you know, goes public in late June at a valuation of that's up to two
02:20trillion, whatever it ends up raising.
02:21Seventy five billion dollars. You keep talking about the whole point of the firm is to invest in companies over
02:27that longer time horizon.
02:29In that case, companies are staying private longer.
02:32What do you do for your LPs or for your firm in an IPO scenario?
02:36Do you stick with it or what's the strategy?
02:39I mean, I think the exciting part about SpaceX is like the next 20 years of the business.
02:44And so I agree with your question. I think it's a it's a hard decision.
02:49Ultimately, let's see where we get to. Right. We'll find out what the company price is at.
02:53As you know, these things tend to happen that night before. Right.
02:56So I think there's a lot of information between now and when the IPO happens.
02:59And I think we're going to be happy with all outcomes.
03:03But we're sort of excited for the next couple of decades.
03:05I wanted to look backward a little bit. You know, the first investment around 2010, you had already had a
03:10history of SpaceX from your time at Founders Fund.
03:13But if you did do two dozen checks over 15, 16 years, what was that like?
03:18We make a lot on this program of Google and Fidelity Founders Fund coming in in these bigger rounds.
03:25But you were able to participate.
03:27I mean, I think really the the thing that we did is consistency. Right.
03:31We were excited about the business. We had conviction about the business. And so we kept investing. Right.
03:36And some people wrote it one check. And that obviously was a huge outcome.
03:39But we kind of showed in here. We showed up year in, year out.
03:43And that's really paid off. And now new people show up.
03:49SPVs, access to retail. Is that what naturally has to happen if we're going to get these companies staying private
03:57longer?
03:57What's the tension there?
04:00I mean, once the company is public, obviously, everyone will have an opportunity to invest in it.
04:04But I think, you know, as we've seen more capital become available in the private markets, I mean, you've seen,
04:09you know, some of the large crossover funds get involved.
04:12So, I mean, there's just there's an incredible increase in the amount of capital available in the private markets relative
04:18to, you know, 10 or 15 years ago.
04:20And so, I mean, I do think some of these things are sort of the natural evolution of the private
04:24markets.
04:25On SPVs. Sorry, I just wanted, you know, I want to get an answer to your question because on the
04:30show, we talked a lot about claimed ownership of companies.
04:35SpaceX is a prime example. But Anderil's talks about this as well.
04:38Yeah.
04:38There are people out there purporting to have a position, but they bought in through some SPV structure ahead of
04:44an IPO.
04:44What's the reality of that? What happens when the real ownership becomes clear?
04:48Well, I mean, I think the greater concern is just fraud in the private markets. Right.
04:52And so just because people there's clearly been fraud in the SpaceX market, in the Anderil market.
04:59And, you know, so I think that people need to be thoughtful about who they who they're partnering with and
05:03who they're doing business with,
05:04because I think we'll find out, I don't know, a year a year after the IPO when people think they're
05:09getting shares and they don't get them.
05:11Right. What actually happened?
05:12That's because of a lockup period.
05:14There'll be some kind of lockup period or whatever.
05:15But I just think it takes a while for people to, like, actually actually start demanding the shares that they
05:20thought they owned.
05:21I think that's going to be an unfortunate consequence of, you know, some some number of bad actors in the
05:25market.
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