YouSaid · the spoken record

Deven Parekh

lines on the record: 91
first: 2025-08-15
most recent: 2025-08-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“There's something there at the core. And then the second one is, I think, what we talked about earlier, The Times Come. Bad times will invariably come, and good times will invariably follow. And you just have to have confidence that both are going to be there And that you're going to learn from both.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think a really important one, it applies to investing, but I also think it applies to life, is oftentimes people don't trust their instinct because they don't think their instinct is a real thing. They think their instinct, the gut, they have these words that people use. But the reality is it's micro slicing a lot of data that you've experienced earlier. Now, maybe at 21, your gut's not worth a lot. It's probably worth a lot in certain things, maybe some human interactions and things like that. It's probably not worth a lot in investing because you just don't have a database. But even at my age, you have this inclination to not trust your gut. There's something about this deal that just doesn't make sense. But the revenue looks good and the margins look good. And so I'll just overlook my gut. And I've just generally, when I've overlooked my gut has not been a good thing.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money and investment, and then you can kind of click through. People always laugh because I show up on a plane. I've got my newspapers and they're like, look at me like I'm like a Martian, you know? And I'm like, no, there's a reason. No, absolutely.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you open it up, and oh, there's this interesting article about nuclear that I don't know anything about, and I read it. Oh, wow, this is maybe this is a real tale risk. Maybe I should understand this.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do. And I think you don't get that. You really don't. Economists is a great example. If you just get the digital economist and you just see the article in AI, I'm going to read that. Guess what? I probably already know that, right? I'm reinforcing knowledge that I have. Maybe I learned one tidbit that I didn't know.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Makes you a better person, makes you more interesting. So that's one. Two, in a world where we start getting people to do varsity soccer when they're three. allow a little serendipity in your life, right? I wouldn't have ended up doing what I was doing if I just followed the plan. And something's interesting, try it. And it turns out you might like it. Now, you might not like it and go back to your original plan, but we've forgotten serendipity. It's why I still subscribe to paper newspapers because I'm probably the only person in my building that might still get paper newspapers, but because they're serendipity. When you're flipping through the newspaper, it's the article that you weren't looking for is where you learn something. You don't have that.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think that keep your intellectual curiosity broad. I was just speaking to her summer interns a month ago, and somebody asked me, like, what's your advice? And I said, I think the mistake a lot of people make is they decide, okay, I want to be in venture capital. So all I'm going to do is read TechCrunch and listen to tech podcasts. And this doesn't make you a very interesting person. I've probably had more dinners or one deals because we found a common interest in art or a common interest in wine. I'm using the things I happen to be interested in, but it doesn't have to be those things. And, you know, everyone has intellectual interests outside of the thing that they want to do. And I would encourage them to pursue those and pursue those with passion because it's going to make you a way more interesting, well-rounded person. And don't just be so micro focused on that thing. And I just think it makes you a better investor.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To say the very least. We're ending on a very depressing note, so we might want to end on something more fun. No, it's listen.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the last couple years just reminded me that it's not done. No, it's not a high probability maybe, but it's not done. And what this book does is it actually starts at time zero, a nuclear bomb drops, what actually happens. What is the defense mechanism that the offensive person uses? What's the defensive mechanism that the other country uses? What happens from, I mean, and it goes into it in not very uplifting detail. And it was just a good reminder that you have this thing out there that still has the chance to... Obliterate the world as we know it. And it's not a 0% problem. It's a low probability. But I think it is important to understand tail cases.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it motivated one of the areas that were philanthropically investing in is next generation ways of dealing with psychiatric conditions. And that book kind of was a starting point of that. And then the really depressing book I'm reading right now, it's a new book. It's called Nuclear War by Andy Jacobson. And you talked about what are these, what are the scenarios out there that were underpricing. And I just felt with what happened over the last... Two years. You know, I think we all used to have Fallout shelters. Everyone would just think of nuclear war. That's done. There's no risk of that.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought it was a great book. And those are more, I wouldn't put those as entertainment, but I found those, if you read those books and you kind of try to apply them to life, I thought both of those were really useful. And then a lot of what I read is around topics that are around our philanthropy. One book I read, which is... The use of psychiatric drugs in this country. And this is not an uplifting book. Of course, there's an epidemic of anxiety and depression. I was going to say anything about it.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I read a lot. And I think two books that I just gave. Both one kid just graduated from college and one is two years out of college, three years out of college. I gave both of them, I don't know if they've both read both, but I gave them both books to read. One is psychology of money by Morgan House. Sure. I thought that was a great book. I wish I read that when I was 21, but I still felt like it was valuable. The other is called Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. Sure.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lux Friedman's, he's an affiliate with MIT in some way. He's got his own podcast. He gets really, really interesting people to come on. I'm involved in Carnegie and CFR, so they both have a podcast, one's called Grant Tamasha, which is on India, which is a policy area. I'm interested in why it matters as CFR's podcast. So I've got driving to the Hamptons is easy because I have hours and hours of kind of... Content”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like I speed read, I can only listen to podcasts if I speed listen. So I listen to all these at 2.4x. Which dries my wife bananas because I'll get in the car and I'm listening to something. It goes to the, you know, the Apple thing and she's like, turn this off. But there's a bunch. Interestingly in reading, I tend not to read a lot of business e-books, but in podcasts, I do listen to that. But the ones I listen to, I listen to acquired. I listen to business breakdowns. I listen to Nikolai Tangin's where he interviews the CEOs. I listened to Invest Like the Best. I listened to you. I listened to Lex Friedman. And then I'm at the FT”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This we could do a podcast on the podcast. But my wife and I just finished watching Friends and Neighbors with John. So good. I thought it was great. So good. I really enjoy. That's just pure kind of entertainment. Absolutely. On the podcast side, I...”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of my life. And of course, along the way, there have been lots of people at all the places I've worked that have been mentors as well.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No loss of comprehension. He made me take a public speaking class with college students when I was at high school. And I was so scared of public speaking. I never could imagine then that I'd be doing a podcast. And he didn't succeed on sports, but his idea was he was like, you know, you should learn how to play golf. That'd be a good thing to know. And Living States? No, well, I, I. I play golf horrifically, but in high school, you could join the golf team. It was a no-cut team. That doesn't mean you were going to get to play, but varsity letter. But you got to learn. And I just said, I'm not doing that. So I got two out of the three, but I think those two out of the three have been really, really important. And I've had a very, very positive”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentor in a way because he made me believe that I had something that I didn't really think I had. And then my dad gave me three important things he told me was one of them is kind of funny. He's like, you really need to learn how to be able to speak well. You need to be able to read well. And he's like, if you're living in this country, you should know how to play a sport, right? And so the way he tried to implement those is... He maybe take a speed reading class in elementary school”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I think to a few different mentors, I was in elementary school a pretty indifferent student to the point where Indian parents were like, you're supposed to have good grades. And I didn't have bad grades, but I was kind of an indifferent student, didn't really focus a lot on school. I had a teacher in third grade who said you shouldn't spend more than 30 or 45 minutes on your homework. I'd go home, look at the clock, 45 minutes, close my book. And then I had a teacher in sixth grade, Mr. Brown. I'll never forget Mr. Brown, who for whatever reason, and I still can't tell you why, saw some potential, you know, saw something in me that maybe other people didn't see. And all of a sudden, I went from a different student to a straight A student. And it was that year. He took interest in me. He would say, hey, look, you're really good, right? You should focus more on these things. And so for me, sixth grade, Mr. Brown, very transformational.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think as the average investor, the average person, I think that risk is way bigger than we think it is. And if you talk to people in government, they would agree with that.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not saying, I mean, I'm answering your question as to something that I worry about that maybe we don't worry about enough. I'm not necessarily sure it's like, I don't know how to price that into the market. It's not really a market answer. It's just something that I think it's an asymmetric risk.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somewhere with that. We've seen that in individual institutions. We've not seen it. Systemically. And that's a That's a pretty terrifying risk.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we still, I mean, I think I don't want to make it sound like the government doesn't think about it. I think they do. But I think it's just people. I don't think we realize the level of risk if physical infrastructure were kind of taken over. And there have been examples of it happening. Like physical infrastructure.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think people still, as much as we talk about it, I don't think people still underpric what happens if there's a real cyber risk. We think about cyber as oh, my city bank account got hacked. We think about cyber as, you know, I got a phishing email work. By the way, all those things are bad and bad things can happen out of them and, you know, everyone has probably dealt with some version of it. I mean, I'm more”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The system went bad We're always going to be. I think that the thing, so I don't know that you could ever teach people to like, oh, move money, but I think the hard part is really, besides maybe not making as much money as you could make, the hard part is just feeling like it's never going to end, right? And now having been through this as many times as I have and my partners have, I think it's easier to recognize that there's light at the end of the tunnel.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I remember it was like a Friday and it was a long week and I called my wife and I'm like, you know, honey, let's just go out for dinner. And she was like, let's stay in. And we had these like five minute back and forth. I'm like. Like, why are we talking about this? And she was like, Well, I thought maybe we should save some money. I'm like, it's not that bad. We can go out to dinner.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still remember when the marker 2008, the market was really crashing. And I remember having a conversation with... Somebody who knows the markets really well, well known person. He said, yeah, GE can't roll their commercial paper. And I was just like, holy crap. That was after.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This too shall pass. And I think that's a hard lesson because, listen, the thing that's still the hardest to do is Warren Buffett's investment, everybody's scared. And you get yourself ready and you've got to put, move X dollars to the Vanguard Index Fund, and then you don't do it. Why? Because you don't think it's ever going to pass. Because if you thought you were going to pass, of course you'd do it. And human psychology is really, really hard to change. And I'm including myself in that definition.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Result because you can't press a button, but a focus on it everyone talking about it, everybody feeling like they have accountability to that process, I think has led to a lot more liquidity over the last. So I think we've gotten an ROI on really putting focus against it. Really interesting. Our LPs gave us feedback on it. I think we thought about it. We said, yeah, it's fair feedback. Let's make a change. Let's make an adjustment.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it's probably been happening for years, but it's accelerated in the last two years. Post-pandemic? Yeah, post two or three years when you had the correction and people felt overallocated. And 21 had this huge peak of investing. And so now there's this big bubble of investing, but not enough liquidity coming back relative to the deployment. In the last two to three years, it's accelerated. And so we took that feedback seriously. I don't think we're the only ones who got that feedback, but we actually put a liquidity committee together from people across the firm, both our financial function, our investment team, our operating team. And we now have quarterly liquidity meetings where we target companies for liquidity. We kind of talk about what the IRR is from here. And I think, and that was said up about 18 months ago, but I think a result of that is, you know, I don't want to say it's the direct.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were not great on liquidity. And by that I mean not that we didn't have good companies. We just didn't focus a lot on liquidity. And as big LPs in our funds, we're generally the GP as tied or close to tied as the largest investor in the funds. So we're pretty aligned with our investors. We kind of were focused on multiple money and not so focused on IRR. I mean, within reason we're focused on IRR, but it wasn't what we. And I think over the last 10 years, 15 years, you've seen a massive transition in the institutional LP base of a shift from MOIC to IRR.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Central reach, which does software for autism clinics. We sold that for just under $2 million to Roper Industries. And then my partner, Jeff Lieberman, led a deal called DotMaddox, which we sold to Siemens for just over $5 billion. And the interesting thing about both deals is One's a traditional early, so we did whiz as a series, I think, B, and then kind of continued to participate along the way. Both Central Reach and DotMaddox were venture buyouts. But the multiples on money were like venture multiples of money. Really? So venture returns with buyout dollar deployment. It's a good combination. Yeah. And so, and I think we've got more coming over the course of this year. So I think we've had a really strong year. One of the things that I think contributed to that is I think historically”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd rather talk about her exits from this year, so keep it current. Yeah, which, you know, so my partner, Jeff Hooring letter Investment in Wiz, which sold to Google, well, I should say, aside a definitive agreement to sell to Google, hasn't closed yet for $32 billion, largest venture-backed acquisition by Strategic. My partner, Richard Wells, led an investment in a company called”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does this solve that I can't solve that I can't solve this too well for we didn't just generally get a really good answer now I don't want to I don't want to say that there's not going to be any crypto applications that are going to be successful I'm sure there will be I mean obviously if you talk to COVID you talk to the CO Mastercard they'll talk to you about stablecoins and the impact stablecoins could have obviously an administration that's very pro-crypto pro-crypto regulatory so I think you're going to”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll put in the past tense. We explored. And decided one, we didn't do that well with it. And two, the fundamental problem that we've seen in it is that when these companies were coming in, we met with hundreds of companies in crypto. When these companies would come in and you'd say, okay, like, tell me what it is about your application that makes it better than if it were just in a relational database. Like a very simple question. You'd kind of get back like all kinds of technical answers and white papers. And I'm like, right, but like as a user, what?”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“AI company out there. There's obviously lots of companies and it's just becoming that AI is becoming almost like an operating system. That all of these new vertical applications are being built on.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think cyber continues to be really important area, and one could argue, and we're just, I don't know if we might just be announcing it, so I don't know whether we announced it yet or investing in something that's kind of related to AI-related security. And so every time you have these big new platform shifts, you have infrastructure around that platform shift that's important, right? And so I think we're seeing a lot of next generation infrastructure investments, cyber investments. So there's a lot of markets that we're seeing. And I think what's happening right now is if I'd answered this question a year ago, I always said, well, we're doing vertical applications. We're doing these types of horizontal applications. And now it's all getting bucketed into AI because it has an AI angle. But there are subcategories within AI. There's not like just one.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they're air out of the room. There's a tremendous amount of capital out there, and there are lots of companies outside of the ones that everybody knows that are growing really, really quickly, often serving a vertical market. I mean, what's still true is that if you have an application that is serving a market where there's a lot of domain expertise or data required, you still have a moat. And so I think this, you know, because one of the big debates is, oh, does AI mean that the software companies are going to be dead? We don't believe that. What we do believe is we have a very generic application that doesn't have any vertical domain expertise, doesn't have any data moat, then I think you're at a significantly higher risk. But I think there's lots of examples. We're seeing them. We're investing in them in specific healthcare applications and legal applications, construction industry.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other big debate in kind of AI land is what will get owned by the LLMs and what will get owned by the application providers. How much of the value will accrue to the models, the OpenAIs and the Anthropics, and how much of the value will accrue to the applications? I don't think anybody can answer that question. We don't know.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I imagine you're suffering from a real problem, and the doctor says, well, I'll see you next year. Now, what if we can kind of get AI to be able to help assess these problems earlier and all of a sudden you take the data from the best institutions and you make that available in an AI application so now people in Appalachia have access to the same level of care as people who have the benefit of being able to be near NYU Link on Mount Sinai? And so I'm going broader in my answer to your question. Which is, I think, AI is now affecting everything we do. And so I think every company that we invest in, we're talking about what's the impact. And then the other thing we talk about is like...”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think what's true is that every company to some degree is an AI company. It doesn't mean they're.ai in their name, but every board meeting that we go to At insight, we're talking about AI. And the irony is even the board meetings I go to at NY Langone, we're talking about AI. Board meetings I go to at CFR we're talking about AI because if you're a medical, if you're a hospital today, you're thinking about how do I have a better experience for my patient? How do I think about increasing throughput? The average weight for a neurologist today across the country is eight to nine months to get an appointment.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, I think every firm, whether they're a venture firm, a buyout fund, it doesn't really matter what type of investing people are doing. I think it would be a huge mistake to ignore AI. Even if you're not investing quote-unquote in an AI company, you better be thinking about how AI is going to affect your business model or how can it improve your business model. And those who don't, even people in services businesses, like if you're running a law firm today, you're running an accounting firm today, you really need to think about how is AI going to affect my business. So, of course, in our case, in our more mature companies, a lot of what we're thinking about is how do we accelerate growth and revenue through new AI products and how do we reduce cost and increase margin through applying AI technology in the companies? Or earlier in mid-stage companies are often AI native. They're actually going after a new market, the legal vertical or construction vertical, with kind of a new AI-focused product.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I think like in everything, when people make statements like that, they tend to focus on the winners. So they'll look at XYZ company that pivoted and say, oh, look, everybody can pivot. Well, everybody doesn't pivot, and you do have a huge, very high loss ratio at seed early stage and even Series A. And the strategy is different, right? You have a power law in Series A, you have a power law in seed, and you have a power law even in buyout. It's just a different power law. In buyout, you can basically your power law is not a lot of losses. You can have some 1x's or 1.5x's, but you probably need a couple of 4x or 5x's. In seed, you probably need 100 extra. Continuum is true across all these markets.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Intuition and pattern recognition, and kind of seeing what a great founder is, which is why I look early stage, I think, is much harder than growth stage or buyouts where you have lots of data and financial metrics that you can kind of rely on.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think TAMs are not static. And I think that's a very, very hard thing to recognize that, okay, maybe they're going after a small problem today, but that might be the Trojan horse to get into a bigger and bigger markets over time, right? And that's where”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What catches Well, I think it depends on stage. I think in an early stage company, founder and tech is really, really important, right? And market. Now, as you said earlier, you're making a guess sometimes on a market at a very, very early, at a Series A stage. Now, you're hopefully making an educated guess based on lots of pattern recognition of companies based on lots of data on how big that market is is measured in different ways. But it's a common mistake to underestimate a market, right? I mean, when we look back, it's a little bit more of a consumer example, but when we look back when we're looking at Uber and we convinced ourselves, how could you ever pay a valuation that's higher than the total TAM? Right. And the total TAM was New York and San Francisco of black cars. Well, it turns out that's not really the total TAM of Uber today, right? Forget about food delivery and groceries. I was just talking about cars. Just yellow caps. Just because they went to Uber X and Uber X totally changed the...”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, I think if you'd asked a bunch of us 10 years ago, we maybe thought, oh, maybe we're going to cap out on software, we're going to have to go do something else that really hasn't been a problem. And I don't foresee it being a problem. So it's a massive industry who's had great growth, but the projected growth over the next 10 years is very strong. So I think that we don't need a new category to go after. We like this category. This category has got amongst the highest growth rate of any category out there. And it's really well downside protected too. If you had a lender on, they would tell you that software is their lowest loss ratio.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, we've been doing software since 1995. And if you look since 1995 to today, I think I might be wrong about this. And maybe there's one other category for which this is true, but I don't think since 1995 there's been a single year where the software industry declined in aggregate revenue through every recession, through every cycle. And as a percentage of GDP, it just continues to increase. Software component continues to increase”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You gotta be really excited about it, right? And so it creates a natural like, no, I like this deal in Long Island better. Okay, well, you spoke with, and it probably should have a little bit of a better return in order if it's that far away. And so we've kind of waited in these places to have really conviction that that's going to be a market because we have a lot of companies in that market before we add presence there. So there's plenty of places in the world where we have companies, more companies than funds that are in that local market.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And maybe that's a good idea, but maybe it's a horrible idea. And having the bar, if you want to do a deal in Israel or you want to do a deal in India, you actually have to get on a plane and go 10,000 miles or fly 12 hours.”
2025-08-15 · Masters in Business · Deven Parekh on the State of Startup Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source