YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeff Wang

lines on the record: 86
first: 2024-10-09
most recent: 2024-10-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I'd say, what would you be doing if not SCGE? So it's one of my favorite questions to ask in an interview because you get to appreciate what else makes a person tick. So I love investing. I really enjoy it, but I think I'd also be very fulfilled in my career. If my career had taken different turns, if I was building a product that's say Instagram or Apple and just making things that touch billions of people, I think that would be also a lot of fun. So I'm going to turn the question back on you, Harry. What would you be doing if not 20 BC?”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So one of the key ideas is that marriage is not to make you happy. And I think a lot of people approach marriage as like, okay, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get married. I'm going to be happier now. Well, no, marriage is hard. And what marriage does, one of the principal ideas is that marriage makes you more Christ-like in that you have this other person who is in your life that you are sacrificing for and you develop hopefully over time a Christ-like love for that person.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The disillusion of the family structure in the world. And I worry about the negative impact it has on kids and the next generation. I get that everyone's life circumstances are different. I don't frown on anyone who chooses not to get married or get divorced, but I do think it's healthy to think hard about it. So anyone on my team who's getting married, I give them a copy of a book, The Meaning of Marriage. It's by a Christian pastor by the name of Tim Keller, who's actually since passed. It's been a big influence on our marriage. So I think that's really.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought you were talking about the markets. I agree. You have never seen this level of investment because I think if you roll back to 1999, for example, you didn't have this MAG 7 that was throwing off $150 billion of free cash flow and you can go invest gobs and gobs of money. I think that is truly different right now. The amount of capital that is going in.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's important to be early, but if I think about the public markets, we're talking about not years, but months, right? If you are, because the public markets price something so quickly, if you figure it out last year that hyperscaler CapEx was going to explode upwards and you're going to buy a lot of GPUs, you can own NVIDIA at any point, you know, last year or even this year, and you will have made money and you will have made very good money. So I think it's not important to be first, but it's important to be early. And again, it's months, not years.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably not taking Google more seriously. So I was at Stanford at the time of its founding. I was even a section leader for Marissa Mayer for computer science class where she was a lecturer. And so I heard about it from her too. And I just thought to myself, you heard of Yahoo? Have you heard InfoSeq? And so it's a good lesson in just not underestimating the disruption that can occur, especially early on in an industry's development.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that way, you are going to make the wrong decisions. And so I think those surveys are actually quite helpful because it gives you a sense for the team's mindset and how its impact, you could probably almost draw a line on, you know, the Nasdaq and the team survey.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is hard. It's really hard. I think so we do these surveys. It's every six months just to get a sense for how the, and they're anonymous for how the team is doing. And man, the initial, I'd say right post-COVID, the surveys were very positive. You know, everyone was super happy. Everyone's feeling fulfilled. They were doing good work. And then you can see the surveys just getting worse and worse. And then in 2022, they're just downright awful. I think one of the things that I've learned is that your mentality is so dictated by performance. And that's just, you can't live that way. You can't manage your business that way. You can't actually go make decisions that way. You have to stay even keeled and say, like, what is, what about my process is not working? Let me go fix that. And this is the discussion about greed when your others are greedy, fear when others are fearful, right? If you actually let that impact you.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the only thing that you can do is focus on the long term. I mean, a bad year will happen. We're fortunate to only have had one down year, but man, that was a tough year. It was tough. 2022”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing comes close to the 2016 transition, but certainly there are moments in time where performance is down, you question your process, what could we do?”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think on the venture side, I'd probably say Brad at Altimeter. He's also got the public private strategy. I think he's a little bit heavier than us on the private side, but I love the way that he can connect dots across stage industry, especially because he will go pretty early sometimes. And I think that flexibility of mindset is impressive.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that optionality is the most expensive thing you can buy. So both financial options but also more importantly life options. So too many young people spend too much effort focused on preserving optionality in lieu of actually making decisions. So I find this problem to be most acute, the more accomplished you are because your talent opens so many doors. And a lot of folks just waste too much time and effort keeping those doors open as opposed to just choosing one to walk through.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love how Ruloff has forged a new path to take Sequoia into the next 50 years. So first, it's not easy to transition from great investor to great leader, as you know. It's also not easy to take over for a legend like Doug, right? So Doug led the firm from 2012 to 2022. It's frustrating that he doesn't get frustrated.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't remember, I don't think it was a good answer because I had to interview with Michael again, but I think his point, and it took me a couple years to understand it, was that just staring at the numbers isn't enough. Too much focus on EBITDA multiples or financial leverage isn't healthy. You have to have the dream gene, and you have to be able to dream about what a founder or company, a team can become over time. And it's just not static. And so I deeply appreciate that lesson. And I'm not even sure that he intended it to be a lesson.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I tried to answer the best I could, but it was not a good start, and I'm sure that people around his office within earshot were cringing for me.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, quick story about Michael and an important lesson that he taught me somewhat indirectly. So when I joined SEG, he obviously had the interview with Michael. It was intimidating interview. So Michael back then had an office where he actually literally had the wall and door removed from one side. So three walls, but one opens up to the entire floor. So I think he meant it as the ultimate open door policy. So some people have an open door policy. He had an open wall policy, right? But that meant that everyone on the floor could hear everything that was said in his office. So i.e. my entire interview. So I walk in, I'm in my suit. Michael's peering over my resume. And the first thing he says to me, and by the way, don't forget that the only thing that I've done up to this point is really technology buyouts. So he says to me, do you think private equity has poisoned you? Yikes, right? Like the interview did not.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At almost every position on the team, Michael still helps me write my quarterly letters to this day. I recall flying out to Ottawa to meet Toby at Shopify with him. And Michael walks out of that meeting and just says, look, Jeff, just squat in that investment and just set an alert for yourself if Toby ever gets hit by a bus. His nose retalent I can borrow. The second, I'll tell you a quick story here.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, Doug's an incredible human being, so he's so good at building trust. He's always generous with his time. I can get him on the phone no matter what continent he's on. He's traveled the world with me to meet with LPs, so I can tell you what Doug likes to eat in every city. If you get him to Boston, he will absolutely crush Cherry Stone clams. He's just someone that you want to go with to war with on their side. Second, Doug has what he calls a great sniffer. Just incredible commercial instinct. He's always listening out, keeping those ears open, looking for what's working and connecting the dots. Doug is exceptional at that. For Michael, I'd say Michael has superpowers that I will never possess. He's got an incredible nose for talent. He's a terrific communicator. He's going to be an accomplished painter now. So one thing that I've learned from him is to borrow his superpowers as opposed to trying to develop them on my own, right? Which is really a lesson in teamwork, except that Michael is the star player.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm optimistic overall, the market, what it has created is it's created great consumer companies, great financials companies. I think what we haven't yet seen is great technology companies in part because some of the best technology founders come to the US. But I'm optimistic. I just caught up with a couple of the GPs on the peak 15 team last week. I think what they're seeing on the ground, I mean, I've been impressed, for example, by what Zamotto has done. The stock price chart there is incredible. And to be able to go from the level of burn that they were doing early on to now really turning that into a profitable business, I think one of the things that we've seen in India is that that brutal level of competition that you saw actually in the US, right too, you saw in the US in the zero interest rate environment, that has subsided in India as well. And so that's allowed companies like Azamado to just.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think the best Chinese companies, like the best European companies, will also go global. So PDD has gone global, Xien has gone global.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has to. I mean, the level of just pure entrepreneurship, the level of just the founder quality, how smart and aggressive they are, it's just remarkable. I just don't think that goes away. I mean, if you look at”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it has to, it has been more difficult for us to say invest in Chinese companies. And it's not just the macro, right? It's these companies have been become less transparent with us over time. We appreciate less what's going on internally. So I think about a company like PDD. I think it's a great company. I don't know what's happening there in terms of why they decide to tank the stock because everything that we see on the ground is still very positive for PDD. And so those things I think do give me pause in terms of not appreciating what's going on internally in those businesses.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think for Klarna, it matters less. But I do think if you are any company that can go global, you start in Europe. Europe is a very nice prize, but I think the best companies will want to go global and they want to go after the U.S. opportunity. It is the US is still probably, it is the largest opportunity for software companies. It's probably the largest opportunity for fintech companies. You know, if I look at most software companies, you're probably two-thirds kind of U.S. Canada in terms of revenue contribution and then one-third everything else. So you have to succeed in Europe if you start out there or your European company. But man, the US is a pretty big prize.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question. For Klarna, I think Europe matters but is incrementally mattering less because they have broadened the business. They did a terrific job of expanding the business into the US and other markets.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, we haven't because I don't know that these ultimately are better businesses after, right? So what you know now is that there's an incredible amount of demand, that demand is growing at very high levels. But if I'm talking about a power electronics company or a company, a construction company that builds data centers, let's say there's incredible growth over the next two years. That's going to attract incremental competition. Are these really great sustainable businesses with deep modes? I think they're okay businesses. I think the stocks may work over the next two years, but in year two or three, do I still want to own them? And I just want to think about these things as a long-term investor. I don't want to be trading in and out of stocks as quickly as I can.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think is a great question. This is where being a hedge fund is actually helpful for investing in something like AI. So we can invest, obviously, as I mentioned, in the application companies, but the way we invest in the semiconductor hardware companies is we can be long NVIDIA because I do think NVIDIA has the best position and whether or not NVIDIA has 100% market share in three years like it does today, I don't know, but it will still have very, very good market share. And so if you believe the market is growing, and I don't know if data center, you know, GPU spend is $100 billion or 200 or $300 billion, but we can go long in video and then we can short a bunch of the companies that I think don't have the depth of modes that NVIDIA has. So if you think about some of these server hardware companies, for example, where I think they're going to get beat up on gross margins because NVIDIA now has a reference design, you have a smaller shrinking pool of customers that are getting more sophisticated that are going to do their own server design. So that's how”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think NVIDIA's price is reasonable if you think it's going to continue to keep going. So NVIDIA trades at what 25 times next year earnings. I think the bigger question is, what is 26 look like? You know, hyperscaler CapEx is going up. I think it's going up at a rate that is surprising to us. It's grown, what, 50% year over year this year. 25 grows another 30%. Is 26 up another 30%”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of that. ServiceNow is a really interesting way to play it. So it's got obviously a very good underlying core business. And I don't know that ServiceNow has necessarily the biggest opportunity in AI, but it's a very clear opportunity. IT ticket deflection is purpose-built for AI. To be able to deflect tickets, to resolve them automatically, that is very clear. That is a very, very clear use case in my mind. I don't know if it will be the biggest use case right now with all the incremental innovation that there is in models. I think coding will obviously could obviously be a much bigger use case. But in terms of clarity, ServiceNow's opportunity, I think, is one of the most clear. Then I'd also argue that overinvestment in the semiconductor and foundation model layer actually should accrue to application companies over time in the form of more better AI capabilities that we can infuse at lower cost.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we more so invest in the application companies that over time I think will profitably infuse AI into their products. So if you can buy a nice core business with a call option on AI, I think that is a very good way to play it.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been surprised at how the scaling has continued, how just throwing more compute, more data has improved these models. I don't know where that ultimately gets to, but I do think 100 billion, there are not a lot of companies out there that can spend 100 billion. What I do believe is you don't need 10 foundation models out there. I think you need certainly more than one just for the sake of humanity. China will have one. I think the Western world will have at least one. So maybe there's three to five foundation models in the world. It's not going to be 10. It's not going to be 20. And so I do think the pool of spend is going to shrink in terms of the number of companies, but the amount that each individual company is going to spend is also going to go up. There is real overinvestment risk, I think. The way that we've decided to invest in AI in the public markets, we have some investments that are semiconductor or hardware stocks that power AI.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies. What I mean by that so if you look at what Meta has done is really just take what ByteDance has done, right? With a recommendation engine now, like I'm plugging a bunch of GPUs into it. I'm copying the same thing and I'm just rolling out to my customers. Copilots, I think you will be able to use what you see at GitHub and be able to roll it out across many different companies. If you look at enterprise semantics search, if you look at case summarization, these are all features that have been proven to deliver ROI at certain companies and now you could just pull that into other companies other products. I think that's going to deliver value. Now, what I don't know, and this is where I do agree with David, there is a massive amount of capital that's going into not the productization side, but the model training research side. That is where all of the capital is going.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do agree with it. I think where I share his view is that there is a $600 billion AI problem in the sense that ultimately application companies need to deliver positive ROI from these massive investments. Where I'm probably more optimistic is in the pace that these application companies can actually realize that ROI, we already talked about Meta, we've already talked about Canva. I think ServiceNow will start to really flow through some of the Pro Plus price increases later this year and into next year as well. I think you're starting to see the initial hints that AI is going to come through in terms of incremental ARPU for a lot of these companies. Now, it's happened probably a little bit more slowly than I would have guessed. I probably would have been more first half this year as opposed to back half this year, but I definitely think you are starting to see it. And I think you're starting to see it because you see the features that can be productized and the clarity from other”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's already delivering incremental ARPU. It'll happen first in companies like Meta, like I said, because you have an auction marketplace, this gets repriced immediately. And so if I look at Meta, we estimate that it's not just delivering revenue. I think it's already delivering about $15 billion of incremental EBIT for Meta, right? In the form of more content recommendation means you have more time on meta properties equals more ad inventory and better ad matching equals higher CPMs and higher CPMs just you know it's straight flow through to the bottom line so it's it's beautiful already for meta now i look at the software companies and i just think it will take more time because you have to go out to your customer and say look i'm delivering you this value here's the data and”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're not either long or short Google, but I do think there are more threats on Google's business than there have been essentially ever in the company's history. I don't think it's just perplexity. In fact, if I were to say, who do I think is going to be the number two threat in search to Google? I think it's probably meta, right? You are going to have the number two chatbot in the world before your end in your Instagram, your WhatsApp, your Facebook. Just go right now. Just go search Meta AI.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Move you in that path to get you to a different location. Or maybe you're even earlier on in the funnel and you say, I just, Harry wants to go on vacation. And maybe I even decide on ski. Maybe you want to go to the beach. So I think AI has a lot of value for that. I'm not sure as much for Google. How do you influence, how do you drive a material uplift in search when you have one of the most beautiful businesses out there ever? I tell you what I want.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On Google, I'd argue GCP is not the cash cow. It's search. With search, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how AI is going to impact search. Where it is today, AI is really good at taking low signal data and translating into high value output. So in the case of meta, taking what you're looking at on Instagram and figuring out, okay, you want to go buy this type of product. That is incredibly valuable. Google's got an incredibly valuable machine in that you type into the Google search bar exactly what you want. You type in skiing in Park City. Well, guess what? I know you want to go skiing in Park City. Your intentionality is 100% known at that point for me. Whereas I think for Meta, I think the value of AI is at least on the ad matching side. I look at a bunch of what you are browsing on Instagram and I say, okay, Harry wants to go skiing. He hasn't decided yet that he wants to go to Park City. Maybe he wants to go to Whistler. How do I then?”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More broadly, but at least in the initial stages of AI where your data and distribution are so important, I think the MAG 7 will continue to do quite well.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is for some time. So when you think about AI today, productization of AI is a function of owning the customer and owning the data. We are not in a world where AI has created a new distribution methodology. And so if I think about some of the walled gardens like Emeta, you own the customer experience, you own the data, and so your ability to productize and roll out AI features and functionality to Instagram users very seamlessly is incredibly powerful. And because Meta has this auction marketplace for ads, you also have the ability to reprice your AI features very quickly, right? All these merchants are getting a return on their ad spend. And if someone is getting better return on ad spend, the CPMs for these ads go up. So there's a massive moat for some of these largest companies. Now, what I worry about is this will start to disperse.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we get the benefit of seeing things very early on. We get really excited about AI, how it's going to take over the world. Maybe we put on a short that is just too early. It's going to take time for some of these things to actually happen. There are areas within AI where I do think it's happening very fast. I think there is going to be massive disruption for example in call centers. And I don't think that's going to take a lot of time. There are other areas in AI. Now there's this narrative that I hear now that software companies are going away, right? AI is going to write all software. And I just think that's a naive view. It may happen over the long term, but”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the biggest risk for us is being based here in Silicon Valley. You believe everything's going to happen overnight. Mobile or cloud and now AI are taking over the world. We have all this destruction in the wake. And the reality is these things usually happen very fast, but also much more slowly than peak enthusiasm would suggest. As a hedge fund, we're trading off the Wall Street echo chamber for the Silicon Valley Venture Echo Chamber. And that certainly got puts and takes one thing that we try to do is to combat that is to host outside voices to speak on occasion. And so I forget if it was Doug or Ruloff who organized this, but organized, for example, Charlie Munger before he passed to come in and talk to the partnership. We've had Stan Druckenmiller come in and talk to us. They think in a very different way than we do.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their specific area. So the Doug and Michael, and I give them a lot of cred for this. The way they set up the various businesses, so SEG, Sequoia, China, Nao Hong San, Sequoia, India, now P15, and Sequoia Heritage was to give each individual team and set of partners full investment discretion. That's very different. So obviously we shared a brand, administrative functions, office space, leadership. So Doug's on the SEG was on the SEG board, now it's Ruloff, and we collaborated closely. But the day-to-day management and investment process is up to that specific team. And I think what it was was it was a recognition that is really hard for an American investor to go make great investment decisions about Chinese startups. Similarly, it is very hard for a venture investor to go make great decisions about managing a hedge fund or family office. It's just not what you're spending every minute of every day thinking about. It's also really hard to recruit great talent if you watch over and second guess every single investment. But that said,”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that's why most hedge funds fail. It is really hard to go build a real business. If you are one of the large hedge funds like Citadel, you have strong LP relationships, you have lockups, you've got an incredible long-term track record. That makes it a lot easier when you have periods that are not up to your expectations. But if you are a $100 million hedge fund today, you don't know if you're going to be in business in a year. It's hard to go recruit. It's hard to go spend money and say, we're going to go build out a data science team. And you don't know how much time do I spend on recruiting, how much time do I spend on management, business building, LP, relationships? And that's before you get to the investing. I think for us, one of the things that was most helpful, actually, in going through that period is that Sequoia does a great job of injecting Sequoia DNA while also allowing these individual businesses to grow up in a way that fits”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you can. I think it's really hard to think about business building if you're making investments and you don't know what your capital base looks like in the next six months.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not standard. That is not standard. And then the least standard part of what we have is we have also a three-year incentive crystallization. And so what that means is most headphones, as you probably know, just take carry at the end of each calendar year. We take carry once every three years. And we also vest ourselves over a three-year period. And so we have that 333 type of framework here where I do think it helps us encourage us to think long term. If you were a fund where you had monthly redemptions and you had, you paid your people an annual bonus, I think it would be really hard to really truly be long term. I think you're really setting yourself up to incentivize your team to think short term.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really just to be the best tech public private crossover firm in the world. And with our advantages, I think we can go deliver on that. We still got to go execute. The other thing that we're not selling though is we're not Citadel. Citadel, I have a ton of respect for Citadel and Ken Griffin. We're not selling a product that is not volatile. We're selling a long-term product because I think our advantages are long-term, right? It's seeing these long-term themes that will play out over the next 10 years. And so if we measure ourselves on a short-term basis, I don't think that is productive. One other thing that we did to set up the structure is because we have this long-term investment horizon, we have a long-term capital base, but we also have long-term incentives. And I think that's really important. So three or more year investment time horizon, three-year minimum capital base, i.e. it takes LPs three years to take your money out.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was difficult. The history of venture PE firms launching public funds has not been a good one. It was difficult to go convince LPs that we're going to go do this. We have fortunately some very supportive LPs, some of who will take the leap of faith with us because we've had such long-term relationships with them. But it was very difficult to be able to convince folks. It was a lot easier once we got a track record and got things going. But the initial $50, $100 million.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's really hard to do in practice. I think most people are fearful when other people are fearful and most people are greedy when other people are greedy. The best way to do it is just to be really long-term about it. This really long term, let's not trade all the time. You know, there was that day, I think it was just last month where the Nikkei was down 12% in a day. I mean, we just don't trade those days. Sit there, try to figure out what's going on, be long-term about it, and not overreact. I think it's hard in those moments, but it's also hard to act in those moments, right? What are you trying to do? You're just running around with your head cut off.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of my bigger regrets and one of our bigger losers is in a company called Twilio. Twilio initially was a very good investment for us and actually ended up being a decent investment overall. It could have been a legendary investment. We held on for too long and as competition started to eat away at the business and we actually saw some signs of it. So gross margin was off a few points here or there. A couple questionable acquisitions, key executive departures. And I think each one of those things you can explain in a vacuum, right? You can pro form an analysis for this gross margin, this specific quarter, or you can say this executive left for a really good opportunity. But I think when you take them all together, I think clearly something was a little off. And so again, that's why I think it's important to regularly underwrite these investments each quarter and have a discussion with the full investment team. And so, again, I think that's where one of the”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Honestly, we haven't, one, we spent so much time making sure the theme is actually working. And then two, we have pretty good insight from seeing what's happening at Sequoia. Doug likes to say you got to look at what wiggles, right? And you got to go hit what wiggles So being able to see what wiggles, be it a company or If you don't see the wiggle, you could do great analysis, but if you never see the wiggle, you're not doing any analysis on anything.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On. I don't know which is the first ship to get there, but we are positive overall on that theme. You know, what we want to avoid is we want to avoid some of these themes that I don't think have legs, where companies, whether or not you do a lot of great company analysis, it just doesn't matter.”
2024-10-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source