YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Eisenberg

lines on the record: 74
first: 2024-06-19
most recent: 2024-06-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Harry is so good to see you. Keep doing what you're doing. You're providing an incredible service, and thank you for taking me as an LP and your fund.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second level question is how do other people think about the way you balance your time? That's the better question to ask. If I'm self-reflective, there are many people who I love and respect who probably think I don't give them enough time and that I don't have enough time for the things I should be having time for, whether it's my day job as a venture capitalist, community work, family, et cetera. I think, as I say in Hebrew after 120, which is when you go to the pearly gates, I'll probably have to give judgment for not having given people who wanted that time the time.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've stopped sourcing. I get all my deals right now through referrals of 30 years of being in this business. And so I actually don't do proactive sourcing anymore. I don't know if I was good at it or bad at it, but I don't do it anymore. I needed to do two or three deals a year. There's enough that come my way that I think are super interesting. I don't think I provide enough kind of management help to companies because I don't know how to manage my way. I have a paperback. I think where I do better on average is networking. I have large global network. And I think that is valuable. I think if you have good huts and are not bashful and you know enough people, you can reach anyone in the world. And I think that's valuable. I had to get the CEO of a Fortune 10 company in the last 48 hours. It took two ops.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, I hope they'll keep me around. Like, I'm old for this business at fifty three. I don't ignore the data which says as you get older in this business, you don't do as well. And so I hope they'll keep me around.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People look for yield in other places and ignored the risk, what I call stroke of pen risk. I'm not the only guy who calls it that, where the government just take away your assets. And so, but because people are chasing yield, they just kind of send it over.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably not having sold enough of my portfolio. In general, when things get too easy, if something is not hard, it doesn't matter. This is supposed to be hard and life is supposed to be challenging. And when we succeed in challenging things, whether it's relationships or hardships or defending freedom or building a startup company, that's hard to build, like Anderill or which is the synthetic chemistry company, we feel satisfied afterwards. This is meant to be challenging. Life is not supposed to be necessarily easy. And you got to keep working at it and keep working at it. The Protestant work ethic is a real deal. It matters. And you got to keep this hard work matters. The other thing I think, by the way, I've never invested in nickel in China. I think China was a Zerk phenomenon also, China investing.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said before I respect all competitors, and I think they're two X better than I am. I have to work harder than anyone. If I said this to Beeser, if I'm not the hardest working venture capitalist out there, shame on me, and I'm going to get killed. These guys are all 2X better than I am. I was on email with Mamun Ameed from Clara this morning. That guy is so good. I think, how do I become Mamun? I just think they're all better than I am and more naturally suited for this business. So I got to work harder.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I'll tell you this, by the way. We've raised an incredible amount of farm money into our company since october seventh, an insane amount of money. It's wide open for business right now, and investors are on the ground every day. That's right now. But the biggest misconception is people think Israelis know how to scale things. And for the most part, when you grow up in a small country, it's harder to think of scale. And so when you're a foreign investor, you need to help Israelis think in big scale.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Younger people, I was concerned about younger people being too absorbed in TikTok and Instagram and watching what happened in Israel over the last 12 months and how the younger people went out to fight for what mattered and fight for their brothers and sisters and fight for women who were raped, younger people, particularly in Israel, but maybe elsewhere, are going to surprise us, and this is going to be an incredible generation who's going to be forced to stand up and fight because Israel is one place, but there's Ukraine, and there's more that's going on around the world right now. We saw what happened in Germany last week. I think younger people are going to surprise us.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, Netunae, Net New Naf, the fact that Shai and Daniel of Lemonade didn't know anything about insurance, like helped a ton. When we first invested in Lemonade, I called a bunch of fintech investors. I said, who's the insurance guy? I said, nobody. That's the beauty. So none of them would invest. Joseco turned up. These guys have broken every rule, every rule of how you build an insurance company for the better because they knew nothing about it. By the way, everyone told us, don't go to New York first. You'll never get a license there. That's the hardest DFS. And we said, go to New York. Actually, I didn't say it. Daniel said, let's go to New York. It was against every insurance expert's advice. I generally have a healthy skepticism for expertise.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I love the whole first time thing. I have this company that's building the monetization layer for LLMs now in a very unique way using blockchain. This is a company that started during the pandemic. We were about four kilometers from each other. And when there was shutdown, I had a pass to get around Israel because I chaired the largest volunteer organization in Israel. And I would pick them up and bring them to my house and we'd sit face to face. And slowly we built this company. It hasn't been launched yet, but they have a couple hundred customers already. He's an incredible entrepreneur. But he was a first timer, and I think it took us time to find out, find our rhythm. And we would spend a couple hours just pounding on this idea month after month after month during the pandemic. I think you probably would have gotten started earlier if I hadn't been so aggressive.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think it can rattle entrepreneurs. Particularly first timers. Second timers don't get rattled. Matom Bard didn't get rowled by anything. Wrong Gordon didn't get rallied by anything.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't invest over Zoom during the pandemic. I just met people out of a farm. I met people, and I do everything in person that I can. It's harder now because you have board members who've invested from all over the world. It's just hard to get everyone in one place. But I think in-person board meetings matter a ton. And by the way, I'll spend two hours in person because I like people. Love the people. And I think it's harder for people to pontificate in person. By the way, the other area I got to get better at by a long shot. You can get really absorbed into these companies. And sometimes I need to kind of pull myself out at a high level because I think, you know, you could just be too intense around these companies. And my job is actually to sit at 10,000 feet”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's generally a letter and not a presentation. It's rich in data, but it upfront identifies these are my core one, two, or three strategic issues that I got to get board input on. You prep for it, you do calls beforehand, and then the conversation is super concentrated because you're attacking the question. I find that people, Diane kind of don't expand, all these burns, they show endless amounts of numbers and people wanted to get on the margins and they show a product plan and everyone wants to be the product manager on the board. It's like just no. I'm getting cranky about this and I probably should moderate my behavior. So there's another area for improvement.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things I found about myself is I've getting older, I'm getting cranky about board meetings. There's a lot of pontificating at board meetings. I've come to the conclusion that with good preparation, most board meetings can be finished in 45 minutes. There's real governance that needs to go on there. There's core strategic issues that you need to pound on, but most of them can be finished in 45 minutes. Some need two hours. None need three to four hours. There's just a lot of kind of endless sharing of opinions for boards.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question, two areas. It has been said about me multiple times that I am very, very direct and therefore an acquired taste.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's how to slower go through, but it generates a lot of cash. We'll see what happens. By the way, one of my bigger exits in my career, we distributed hundreds of millions of dollars of dividends. It doesn't happen, but it's never happened to me again.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very few have it. 10 to 15 to 20% growth is tricky. That's a tricky middle place if you're a venture capitalist because it's not clear how you get out of it. These would have been great businesses if they didn't take venture capital if they took venture capital and stacked your large preference on the cap table. It's challenging. What happens to them? Some of them will grind it out for a very long time until some sort of exit market opens up as long as they're in control of their own destiny and they're profitable. That's not a terrible way to think about this. Others will be traded in large secondary trades and portfolios. And some of them, if they're good enough, will buy back stock. I just had a company actually that bought back stock from early investors. I didn't sell because I thought the price was too low, but I have a company that generates more than enough cash. We bought back stock. So I reduced dilution in this company. Which already wasn't much, it's profitable business for a while. We'll see what happens to the asset over time. We will make, by the way, a significant multiple on our capital whenever it comes out. It's not growing. It's probably the Kager's probably 30, 30, 5%.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, we talked about like 100% growth like it was easy for a decade, but it's not 30, 40% growth is great business. So let's just say that first of all.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For future cash flows. So the question of future cash flows is not just how much cash it is per year, but how many years this goes on for, how many years this goes on for is a function of competitive advantage. So you need to think through how deep my competitive advantage is in a given category. You know, there's a lot of talk about Google right now. Does AI undermine their ad model? Yes, but that competitive advantage is actually really deep, I think, for the time being. How long that lasts though is really the question. And that depends on consumer behavior, which is fickle, right? How much of it moves to a different modality than the search. And so the question that I think needs to be asked in TVPI land is these underlying portfolio companies, how deep is their competitive advantage? How sustainable is the growth? I think when you kind of dig that level deeper, you'll find that a small number of companies matter to TVPI, and that matters.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they should actually. I had this tweet back and forth with Ibrahim Ajami of Mubala. The DPI is what matters. And that's true. If you didn't take money off the table during the ZERP era, there's something wrong. Let's just be clear about that. But TV actually matters because I had this conversation with one of our LPs at our annual meeting, which is if the thing is compounding at a high rate and keeps going, that's not a bad thing. I can kind of think through if I kind of wait another two or three years that this will be worth a significantly larger amount of money. The question is one level beneath TVPI, which is how real is it and how sustainable is it? People in the venture business, and this goes back to the previous conversation about competitive markets versus non-competitive markets, underestimate moats on businesses, the value of moats and competitive advantage on business. There is insufficient time spent on how do I deepen competitive advantage in this business. To take a financial rendering of this, multiple is my expectation.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the first style of funds that goes out of business is funds where there's three, four, five partners, and only one of them is good, and that person gets tired of holding everybody on their shoulders, and they leave and set their own thing up, and everyone knows. I think that's one. There's just some people who won't deliver capital back to LPs and they'll be gone, and some will be big and some will be small, and it's fine.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generation of people grow up during usurp. Now, reality is biting. That's not a bad thing, by the way. It's like startups going out of business. You recycle the talent into something better.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, Bruce didn't leave you from Benjamin. I used to say that venture capital has the highest barrier to exit of any business out there. No one wants to leave. You know, the management fees kind of keep coming. I think that's true. So it takes longer than people think. But yes, of course.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nope, for a variety of reasons. Number one, because companies pivot. Number two, because you convince yourself of all sorts of stupid things by kind of dreaming about the exit. And number three, it never works out like that, so why bother?”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The consumer is ephemeral. Sometimes work sometimes doesn't, sometimes goes out of style, sometimes. I think of consumer as fast fashion in many cases unless you build a moat. I think there are rare consumer companies who build a moat. The AI conversation, somebody from Target Consumers, it's really hard to tell a difference visibly between open AI and menthropic and many one of a number of models. So you kind of ask yourself, what's the moat? So let's say the moat's the data. And over time, some people will note that it's significantly better. It's like Elon Musk is talking about XAI is going to be the place of truth. I hope he's right. I'm not sure how I'll know. That's kind of a question. How do you build the moat on those businesses? It's not clear to me right now. Google built a moat because they were by far the fastest and then they had this kind of reinforcing ad business that added onto it. But who gets to build a moat in these businesses is not obvious to me.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like him too. He made a very smart observation. He said that we do parada into our middling companies. Super interesting. He said the good ones just kind of get, they become runaways and you kind of get more capital. And bad ones you want to put money into. But sometimes one out of some number of these kind of middling companies where most people don't see what's going on there at the beginning, but I do. You give them a little extra capital or you kind of double down once or twice and you end up with a winner out of this kind of middle part of the portfolio. It's a giant winner. I thought that was super insightful.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. Initial check six and a half seven percent of the fund. They're not going to need to raise any more money, it looks like, after the A. They can, but they probably don't need to. If I didn't get my ownership in the A by writing this big check, I wouldn't have a position.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of drank the benchmark Kool Aid. We don't get the same kind of credit the benchmark gets because Olaf invested so someone's going to invest, we don't have to do one more round. But we try to kind of peel back on it. We think we have to buy our ownership in the first round. Our unique insight is in C and A. Buy it. Write the check. Buy it. We wrote this giant check to a company called Dream Security, which is AI infrastructure for protecting critical assets in countries. It was the biggest check we wrote. Crazy competitive deal. Incredible team”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ride the public market, so you kind of average into a position and then average out of a position. I don't think this is like this. This is a binary industry, very, very binary investments. And I'm in that binary camp. Rare”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You asked me before we got on the show what was the biggest mistake I made during ZERP? One of them was not selling 100% of one or two positions when the prices were high. I'm actually in the opposite camp generally, which is ride your winners. That's the general camp I'm in. I think the question you need to ask yourself if you're a venture capitalist and you sit on the board is do I have an information advantage or a unique insight that somebody else does not have? If I think I have that, I should act on it. And if I should act on it, I should act on it with conviction. It's like when I go into companies, I don't want to have position. If I have conviction, I'm going to take a whole position. This business is out an outlier business. It's just the nature of it. So take the whole position. And if you think you hit a good return, take the money off the table. I don't think you average into positions in the venture capital business.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way the last thing I'll just say about the secondary markets we've discovered you get these emails like you probably get them also to a day that says I got a buyer in the market for so-and-so company so over the last three or four weeks we decided to do a little experiment We reach out to them now. We used to ignore them. But now it's interesting because like you discover their actual buyers there. There aren't. There are not actual buyers there. It's, hey, okay, we can hold this price if you get us due diligence material in the company. These are just people looking for data. I think most of those buyers aren't out there either.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have no idea whether they get let off the hook for it. I don't know if it's a ton of companies, but it's not one. It's not just plural sight. There's a lot more like that out there. There's a lot more like that out there. Also think about the following. If you were to P fund that just took a significant write-down on one or two big software purchases, you can have appetite to buy something? I don't think so. There's a small number of really great businesses that are built in venture. It's like 10 a year. And some other ones get smaller liquidity events, which is great. We should have that. But if you can get paid ten to twenty times on your medium companies or even five to seven times on your medium companies, it's not a bad outcome. I don't want to mention company now. We talked before on the show. We just took 100% of our equity off the table in a company. I think we did 11x or so. We have a different view of the company than management. Some of the other investors do. That's fine. It's totally fine. We're very happy. We'll be super happy if the founder makes it into a 30x and we were wrong. We'll be so happy for him. But liquidity is a thing.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not concerned. I'm certain. It's happening. We just don't know. By the way, an inventor portfolio, there's a lot of this also. And I also wonder a lot about how many SaaS companies get undermined by AI right now. And there's a lot of SaaS portfolios sitting at hefty prices in people's portfolios, hefty values in people's portfolios that aren't worth that anymore.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It drives prices down, increased cost of capital, drives multiples down, just what it does. When interest rates go up, multiples go down. It's a loss of physics. They'll pay over multiple because their cost of capital is higher. People are just not going to get liquid the way they think they are. And the top part of the capital has happened, by the way. In 2001, 02, 03, 04. The top part of the cap table got his lick pref back. People have forgotten the lick prefs matter. And they got their lick pref back. In some cases, there used to be an 8% coupon on these things. Many cases now there isn't. They took an 8% coupon. And then what was left went to the rest of the cap table.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, Amazon, the business of the world went public. Everyone's forgotten that Facebook went down 50% after their IPO. It's one of the biggest companies in the world today. It's okay. And everyone's like expecting PE to turn up and buy these companies. I got bad news. Number one, they're going to buy a tiny percentage of companies. Number two, interest rates are way up. They can't borrow anymore. Number three, they're incredibly price sensitive. Most companies waiting for PE to come save, and I hear this is like this whole meme right now that PE is going to be the buyers of the future.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if they'll give you two experiments of 18 months, but go. And by the way, if the bankers are playing this game, we want you to have half a billion dollars, etc., find a second-tier banker. They're just as good. You don't need to raise $500 million and go public. Go get take your company public. Let's say $100 million of revenue. Take your company public at $600 million, raise $80 million, build an efficient business, and go”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, one of the things I've discovered. So let's just back up. A tiny number of companies get sold or go public. I don't buy that the IPO window is closed. The IPO window is wide open. The question is, what's the price you're willing to take? You can go public. Reddit went public. It's done very well in the public markets. It's delivered a stellar first quarter after going public. It's doing very well. It's like a seven or eight billion dollar company right now. You don't need to have a half a billion or a billion dollars of revenue to go public. We took Lemonade Public with $60 million of revenue. You should go public early and the markets are open. Take the price the public markets will give you and build your company in the public markets. You will be better off for it. I am a huge believer in that.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Socialist. Lena Conos said openly is, I think, a threat to American capitalism. Whether Biden or Trump gets elected, she needs to go because we need to be able to have M&A for the big companies. And as best I can tell, she hasn't redefined what antitrust is. And so I think she's taken a lot of liberties that are just bad for capitalism globally. Where's liquidity going from? So I have bad news for you. 98% of people don't get liquid. This is a very difficult environment, number one, but number two, this actually is a hard business. I know this would be like an explosion of venture capitalists. It's a hard business.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My podcast of Beezer, I said, We should talk about ageism because she should probably get rid of me from the fun I'm told to be doing this.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said I'm unencumbered by any knowledge of technology or software management experience, by the way. I've never managed anything and I can't write a lot of code last line of code was in seventh grade. This is the venture business. You're going to lose a lot of money. You're going to lose a lot of companies. The question is actually, why does a founder want to take your money if he comes from something else other than software? And I think that'll be interesting and very Darwinian in that some founders or the great founders are likely not taking SAS investors money because the SaaS playbook, as it's become called, doesn't apply to any of these harder technologies.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About selling defense technology than everyone's forgotten. And that's just different. And so people will lose a lot of money chasing the new thing, which today happens to be defense in addition to AI”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're not responsible, people get killed. At the same time, I think that there was always an alliance between Silicon Valley and the defense industry and patriotism, to use I'm from the United States originally, is a real thing and it should be in tech. You should be patriotic. I think patriotism is a great thing, a wonderful thing. People should be proud of their people and proud of their country and proud of their cultures. That's not the same thing as your margin as my opportunity. I think there will be a lot of money made in defense going forward. I think people way underestimate what it takes to sell defense, you know, to government buyers, the regulations, how hard it is to sell. If you've never sold defense technology and you've just come out of an MBA, good luck. Palantir to 20 years to crack this code, Andrew cracked it much faster because of Palantir. Palmer lucky, people kind of because he's dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. Don't take him seriously enough. Trace Stevens is there who was at Palantier. Tracy was a founder's fund. That guy is incredible. And he knows more.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a father of four children who have served in Gaza and on the northern border which Hezbollah has been burning nonstop, in Israel war is a real thing. It's a very serious thing. It's serious because people get killed. It's serious because it shows what you're fighting for, which is freedom and the values of the West. There are enemies out there. I've written publicly that I think this generation of Israeli kids is the defining generation. They've stood up and fought for what matters. I think there aren't enough people willing to stand up and fight. Now, these kids, because they've been in battle, have a level of maturity than your average MBA student does not have. And they understand what it means to hold a weapon. Holding a weapon is a responsibility. Israel has a tiny homicide rate, despite the fact that most of the population is armed and many of them walk around with automatic machines. You can go to a wedding. I was just at one. There are eight girls in wedding dresses of sorts, and they have machine guns slung on their back. But you learn to respect it. You learn to understand that this is a serious matter. And that if you're not careful,”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they were 10 years ahead of the US on AI and Psyops using TikTok. I think they were 10 years ahead of the US in sophistication of how to manipulate the minds of young people using AI algorithms in TikTok. I would assume, I generally assume of my competitor of my enemy, that they're much smarter than I am. That's the only way to stay ahead. So even if by some bizarre notion you think that they're two years behind, you should think they're two years ahead.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's tough. You know, the US put a ban on NVIDIA chips going to China. I don't sense that it slowed China down in a meaningful way. I think there's enough kind of semi-degraded chips that you can kind of string together or open source designs. You can kind of figure this out. I think the world is far more open than we give it credit for today. And so it's really, really, really tough to shut this down. I think we just have to be ever more competitive technologically to stay ahead of the bad guys.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with it in part. I think it is true that AI is likely to be a key competitive advantage in wars, even significant. Look, we're living through a war in Israel right now. And so kind of closing the kill chain using AI is a thing, not just in Israel. It's all over the world. And there's a big European company now. I was doing a few hundred million dollars of revenue that uses AI to close the kill chain for European armies. This is a real deal. I said before, if the 20th century was about nuclear countries versus non-nuclear countries, the 21st century is AI countries versus non-AI countries. We shouldn't lose sight of the nuclear ones because there's these terrible people in Iran out there, you know, who are looking to acquire a nuclear weapon. By the way, not just threaten Israel to threaten Europe. That's the key thing people understand. They have missiles long enough to hit Israel, new missiles long enough to hit Europe. And thinking of them as an AI country is quite frightening, actually. And they may be, they're very smart people there. What is naive about what Alex said is that you can keep it closed.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Super high level that's more likely to happen in Europe than in the US. I think that is going to set Europe back in competitiveness more than it's already been set back in competitiveness over the last 20 years. If I'm in Europe and I'm starting a company, I would get out. Thanks, Michael. While I'm to London, I think the US can ill afford to slap too many shackles of regulation on AI companies because they're in competition with China. And I think Israel won't do it. And so when you look at kind of the key markets for AI development, where the U.S. is first and China is second and Israel is third, I think those are likely to be less regulated than most, certainly than Europe. And so those will be advantaged economies going forward.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the adoption is incredible and the pace that these things are learning at and adapting at is incredible. By the way, you see the efficiency in customer service a lot of these fintech companies was lemonade or add in or Klarin or any of these people. It's stunning. And at the same time, when you kind of look across a broad economy, it's going to take a lot longer than people think. And there'll be some disruptors and some people who get this and regulation will have something to say about it. Not in the way everyone's talking about, you know, like Sam Altman trying to do regulatory lock-in, but there's just a lot of businesses that are regulated, like farmers are regulated and financial services are regulated. And, you know, it's hard for regulators to keep up with AI. And that's going to be a big deal for how much it can be deployed.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Buyers today are willing to pay for value, it's harder for companies who are used to price per seat models or used to large enterprise to kind of adapt to this. There's been a bunch of pieces written, I think Sarah Table wrote one that people pay for work. I think that's a real thing. I think people will pay for improvements to their business, and I think the consultants like Accenture and McKinsey are the leading edge of this. But I think it's going to come into software very, very quickly.”
2024-06-19 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Foundation Models are the Fastest Depreciating Asset in History, Lina Kahn is a Threat to American Capitalism, PE is Not Coming to Save the M&A Market & How China Could Overtake the US in the AI Race with Michael Eisenberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source