YouSaid · the spoken record

Lucas Swisher

lines on the record: 67
first: 2026-02-23
most recent: 2026-02-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Ultimately, price always does matter. Right. I think some folks will say price doesn't matter. I think price does matter, but I think it matters least. You, of course, could make the argument of, oh, Lucas, well, you do it five. Why not six or seven or eight or nine or ten billion? What if it was 20 billion? What if it was 30 billion? There does come a delineation point where you feel like the returns are going to erode such that you would pass on an opportunity. But I'd say by and large, if you're the one instigating these rounds and you're the one that's preempting these rounds, you can kind of help figure out what the right price is for a company to get at any given moment. And I do think you want to think about it last because again, these generational companies that's almost never too late for them.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I think the founder is incredibly important, right? You go back to the example of Databricks. Most founders in that situation, they would have been handed, well, not handed. They would have built an incredible company in that first wave. But maybe they wouldn't have found their way to wave two and three and four. And it's, again, it's why we like this type of company that we call a platform company, right? Which is the, has shown the ability to skip TAMs, to have multiple TAMs over time. And I think that founder is tied to the market, you know, is tied to that market dynamic. And they're equally important, but market size is always first. A great founder in a small market with a wedge that is not easily able to expand, I think we'll build an incredible business. But without having that core market and that core trend, it's hard to get to 100 billion, right? Like you could be in this niche area that's very hard to expand. It's really easy to get an act one, but hard to get the act two and the act three and the act four. And to build that enduring company, right, you see it with SaaS today. You have to have the Act two in the Act three.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's actually a stat around this that I love. We have this chart internally, which just shows at each market cap band, the percentage of companies that 10x and the counterintuitive thing is as you go up those bands, the percentage increases. So from a $10 to $100 billion valuation, I have a better shot at picking a 10x, not like a better return, a 10x than I did in the prior band.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The opportunity to double down and make an even larger investment where more of my capital is going to be deployed over long periods of time. And again, it's important why this market structure is changing, right? I now, because companies are staying private longer, these platform companies are staying private longer, you have the opportunity to make those bets. Previously, you might not have, but now we have the opportunity to make those kinds of bets.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's really fair. And again, it's something we think about a lot the two things you want to consider when it comes to that, right? And it's one of the reasons why, again, we love having a flexible mandate. We are not tied to just being able to do a series B at 300 posts and like that's all we can do is because we can have almost this like rowboat that rose up and down the river anytime we see something opportunistically that we think is the best risk adjusted opportunity at that moment, we can invest. And then the second thing we're really looking for, right? Take that round as an example. And one of the reasons why we go back to this big idea test is I want to believe that if that company works, that it's best days are ahead of it and I can continue to invest. One thing that Jeff Hooring from Insight always says is the best round is the double down round. And so by getting access to that company at a certain stage, if I think it has a shot at being $100 billion company, that round may not actually be the best round, but it gives me...”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Align that earnings path is really achievable. And so what you need to really believe is like take this 50 million ARR 5 billion post type company. You need to believe that someday you can get to 5 billion of revenue with 30% margin minimum growing really fast. So what does that mean? I better believe there's 50 billion of revenue to go get.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it filters down into every decision that we think about all the time. And I think the key is first, you want to be in gigantic TAMs. Big ideas only. Because if you ever compromise on that very first principle and you're paying high valuations, you're in trouble. Medium TAM, small TAM, you better believe that this thing can be absolutely gigantic. We have this test internally, right? Where it used to be five years ago, we called it the $10 billion public company test. Can this be a $10 billion plus public company? That bar has changed in this new world because we are tackling much larger markets than we used to. And so now that test is, can you be just an enduring public company? And that may mean $50 billion of market cap. It may mean $100 billion of market cap. It really depends based on the stage, but really it's big idea first. And then is the market absolutely yanking you into that giant market? Do you feel that market pull such that that revenue curve and subsequently down”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To re Yeah, this is one of the hardest things. It's why we actually think the framework that we use internally is we think about valuation. Everybody has to think about valuation. But when a company is growing exponentially 10x year in year, 50x year in year, right? The things that we're seeing now, we think about valuation last. It's the last question we try to answer. Is the valuation great? Because you mentioned you may invest in a series C at 20 million of ARR at 3 billion posts. And that seems insane. But if the 20 goes to a 200 in one year and then 600 the next and 3 billion the next, all of a sudden that looks extremely cheap. And so our job is how do you find the things that are on that curve?”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Data transformation layer to running in training models to being the center of all data in the enterprise. Those are like multiple S curves that he's hopped and multiple times he's reinvented the company. It's not revenue growth that you want to chase. It's that.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're absolutely right. I think it's changing. And I think it changes during every architecture shift. Right. This is the really critical part of technology, right? As you move from on-premise technology to SaaS technology, as you moved from the internet to mobile internet, you had a potential for all of the companies in the prior generation to completely evaporate. And the big question is, can you find the companies that have the talent density that are the most forward thinking, that are willing to reinvent themselves over and over and over again, which is so hard. And those are the companies that you want to find out. I think of a great example every time I think at this point, which is Databricks. If you talk to Ali from Databricks, we've been an investor since 2019. I think one of the things that we've seen from there and even before, I mean, I looked at the company when I was at Kleiner Perkins. I've seen this company for a very long time is his ability to reinvent that company over and over and over again and ride multiple S curves from being basically an ELT trim.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our job to make incredible investments and generate real returns. That's where we are 100% focused on, generate real returns for our investors. I think it's one of the benefits of having a somewhat flexible mandate, right? Is I'm not tied to having to do a Series B this year. If this trend emerges and it continues to persist, some of the best trades for us, some of the best investments for us, are in that segment of the market.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know that's absolutely right, right? We've seen the emergence of, I mean, we call them platform companies, right? At the top, call it 20 Rough Justice 20 companies in the private markets. 18 of those would probably be public today, a decade ago. But we've seen the emergence of these platform companies. They're huge scale, growing way faster than basically anything you can access in the public markets. They have multiple products. They've shown they can be great public companies, but they're choosing to stay private. And those platform companies, you cannot get access to as a public market investor. As a normal person, you can't buy stock in OpenAI or Revolute or Open Evidence, all CO2 portfolio companies, right? You can't get access to those. And one, I think that's a shame for the normal person that they can't go and buy that stock. But two, it is an enduring trend that we've seen over the last five to ten years.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think you could make the argument both ways. On the public side, one, things may look cheap, but things may look cheap for a reason, right? When things look really cheap, oftentimes they look really cheap for a reason. On the private side, oftentimes the most expensive deals can be the best ones.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's really, really hard right now is the short answer, right? This is the debate that we have all the time inside of our building. You know, you take a design tool. For example, you can make an argument that that design tool is super well positioned in a world of AI because they're going to integrate AI into all the design process and generate so much more value than before. But then you could say, well, I just create all my designs in ChatGPT now, right? So why would I even need this design tool? And I think that's the argument that you're going to have on both sides of this at all times. I think the things that you're going to want to look for, the leading indicators that you're going to want to look for is the revenue still continuing to grow sequentially. Is net new AR still continuing to climb? What's happening with the retention dynamics of these businesses? The more you can see that, the better you're going to feel. But the reality is for the next three months, six months, nine months, we're not really going to know what's really happening in the world. Things are happening so fast. All of the earnings that happen are retroactive, right? So you can only see into the past that way. So I think that's why.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or something else, right? And so I think that's the real dynamic that's happening those two things are happening all at once and all of a sudden, you know, that barrier breaks down”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the first time ever with this AI wave, people are questioning the terminal value of SaaS. These were supposed to be like insurance companies, you know, annuity streams that just had revenue streams and profit pools forever and ever and ever. And for the first time with a lot of AI, and I think in particular in the last six months with a lot of the coding models that have come out of Anthropic OpenAI and others, you are starting to question that value. And when you question that value, a lot of other things happen. The breaks that you got on SBC, stock-based comp, and gap versus non-Gap earnings, those all start to go away. So that's the first dynamic. And then I think the second dynamic that's happening is people don't know which SAS is going to be affected, right? Like you can think of a bull case and a bear case for basically every SaaS company in the public markets. And when that happens, people are saying, okay, I'm just going to take my bags and I'm going to walk away and I'm going to do something else. Because why own anything if I'm really not sure which one of these things is going to work? I'm just going to go own consumer internet or semis.”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think price does matter, but I think it matters least. Margin matters, but early it can be a misleading indicator. Data is a prerequisite. It is not the answer. One of the places where we don't spend time, these pre-revenue companies are really high valuations. I don't think the king making concept is a real thing. Who's going to want to help you and who's going to want to hurt you?”
2026-02-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside Coatue's $70BN Machine: Why Price Matters Least | Why Mega Markets are the Most Important | How to Assess Durability of Revenue and Margins in AI with Lucas Swisher · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source