YouSaid · the spoken record

Philip Freise

lines on the record: 74
first: 2025-06-30
most recent: 2025-06-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Harry, I'm going to make an old FAR type of comment. I've seen at least three, if not four cycles, where liquidity goes from unbelievable exuberance, like we've seen in 2021 to the drought that we see now. Only for people to say at the peak, liquidity is limitless. And the party is never ending, so I don't actually need to sell anything. I just write all my winners. To give way to the hangover and the realization that that was a mirage, there's no more liquidity. And then at the bottom, people predict there will never be liquidity again and it's structural and the world is coming to an end. I literally can walk you through the same sentiment in the great financial crisis after the dot-com bust into certain elements probably all.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to be willing to challenge each other and to be open about concerns you have coming back to your AI point. A lot of this is pattern recognition. Isn't that fascinating? The best investor today in the world. Full stop is Warren Buffett, who is what, 93 years old? How do you replicate that brain?”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's not one brain which decides. We truly are partnership. If you have two or three brains around the table thinking through a tough decision, you always get a better decision than if you just have one.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of the crossover firms move. Growth is a separate team. I cannot understate the importance of this. It's not like the same bunch of people does different things. I don't think that the DNA of KKR and of other later stage firms, it extends to what Insight does or what growth funds do. It will never extend to venture because it's a different skill set. It's a very different skill set.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have incredible respect for the benchmarks and the Harry's, the Daniel X who found those types of opportunities. But you know you asked me my lessons learned from Venture Park. I tried Harry. That's what I set out to do. And I learned the hard way that some brilliant minds can do that and some others that are not so much in that space. My experience is the truly outstanding investors venture are ones with deep vertical experience and real knowledge. I'm a generalist. I've seen so many things in patterns. I'm better in the later stage industry. You look with great admiration at the Excel's benchmarks and indexes in Kleina Perkins of the world, but that's not our business.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm making the bold prediction that you have just seen three of the incredible winners in the space, but they will be not the norm for whatever comes afterwards. When you see those winners, you better invest and double down or triple down. But this doesn't mean that software, SARS models and investment that is the bread and butter of many in our industry still will not be good investments anymore. You just have different cycles there.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fantastically intellectually inspiring and interesting because we are the largest owner of fertility clinics in Europe. We are expanding very quickly and very broadly in different geographies, in different areas. I know Elon likes talking about this, right? The demographic trends are not great. People do not have children anymore. We're extending lifespans. But to answer your question, those are businesses that will not be replaced by the AI models. real businesses that still very much need the cash to open more clinics. So I know I sound like a younger version of Warren Buffett now, which is crazy, but he's right. Things are looking different often every five years. But if you separate the noise from the reality, the underlying principles of capital allocation has to be very thought through and rational. It hasn't changed. You will have some AI models where you need lots of capital mixes a lot of sense to invest in there. And you have some”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's extremely important. If you think about everything we discussed about the crisis, you have to sustain, the discipline of capital allocation for the founders and the CEOs of these businesses.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always do, but it's more like 10 15% of the fund. So you would, of 8 billion, you would retain, let's say, a billion or so as a reserve because we do not need as much capital for follow-on rounds because, you know, in terms of the maturity of these companies, these are the Spotify's, right? These are very big companies that do not necessarily need any more rounds. It's more for the follow-ons is typically for acquisitions. So if they want to buy something.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The last 10, 15 years, three quarters of all investments we have made are partnerships. So I didn't just buy something outright, but I went into, for instance, in Bremen, OHB, we are 30% shareholder or Wild in Germany, which was the synthetic flavor business, 35%.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of 8 billion, typically you have around 15 investments. So of these 15 investments, when you start selling some of them, when you start insisting that they should be better and when you just keep them for the long term because they're your winners. Often if you make that a work of love for the individual investors in the fund, you start losing perspective. You have to top down as the leader of the fund make those calls to say, hey, you know, my space company in Bremen, which is OHB, we just did that investment, that's going to be a big winner, give them everything's going on. And then there's five others which are great, but honestly, they do not compound in value consistently by more than 20% or so. And at some point, if somebody calls you and says, hey, we would like to buy that company, you just have to force yourself to sell it.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“KKR is an $8 billion fund. It's the largest standalone investment fund in Europe. As you know, I'm a massive voice for Europe. It's been not always easy. It's tough sometimes to make the case that we should invest in Europe. But it helps us to have that vehicle because it actually very much helps you in that discipline to say as a global investment firm, Europe is on the map, we got to deploy. Relative to a global fund, which can just make the decision to deploy in another geographies. In terms of your question on portfolio construction, it is so important because traditionally people didn't really think about themes, they didn't think about growth versus cash flow, didn't think about the underlying industries, the geographies. So we really focus on that. And also, many people in my industry, and I know you're going to reflect on that in our conversation, sometimes lack is the discipline to say, hey, in a fund.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an excellent question. What I told you is just a variety on the theme of linear pacing because we typically have five to seven year cycles. On average, it's probably more like four or five. But we very much believe in you got to have the discipline of a linear deployment because it avoids that issue. So even though COVID hit in 20, you know, if you have a four-year cycle, you have to deploy 25%, right? Most people didn't deploy anything. We took the decision to go 10, 15 above. But then we got lucky because in 2021, we didn't invest almost anything. And as you know, my market went very exuberant when COVID gave way to that incredible wave of liquidity. The answer to your question is, it's incredibly important, that discipline to deploy linearly over three years in your world and five, four, five years in ours.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we do is we partner a lot with companies, right? We don't just buy outright. So the decision at that time, Coti, was the holding company that owned Vela. And we had seen, again, I give my oldest daughter the credit for this, one of the Janers had her cosmetics brand, just sold the Cody, which was an unbelievable Instagram success. And Cody got a little bit in trouble. They were over leveraged. We took a 10% stake in the company and then bought out the majority of Vela at the same time. So it was kind of a combined transaction. That leap of faith to do that in the midst of the pandemic because they had in their mix also a travel retail business, for instance, which of cosmetics, et cetera, you could ask, okay, when are these airports going to open again? That was a bold decision because in conjunction, these two investments were very sizable in the fund.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decision to invest with Bertelsmann into music at a time, quite frankly, when music was in free fall. That was a great investment in the end, was a courageous, but probably I could only do it at KKR because we didn't make any other investments. There was no large investments. But then the crocodiles came later. We thought that, yes, there was a great financial crisis, but those types of disruption are exactly when you should go in. And we didn't. And during COVID, there was no discussion with our founders and our leaders around should we invest now? There was the opposite discussion. There was a very reflected top-down encouragement. Don't be afraid. Talk to us about what you can control. Let's deploy.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many people thought at KKI in Europe we were crazy when we leaned in and invested, I think, a third, if not 40% of our current fund during COVID. So in 2020, we made some bold decisions because we don't know what that virus would yield. But I've learned a long time that you have to focus on what you can control. So I give you an example. We invested in Vela, the other haircap brand with L'Oreal. And there were seriously people who questioned, well, once this pandemic is over, will people still go and get their hair colored having three daughters and three sisters, I absolutely was convinced this is not going to be a problem. And so we invested. And there's many more examples like this. So yes, those types of uncomfortable decisions we took, and I tell you why. After the Great Financial Crisis, we were pretty much like the rabbit in the headlight. We didn't invest anything. The only investment in 2009 we made was BMG when I took the”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At KKR, we made exactly the same decision. We tried also Africa, Ethiopia, where we were the largest growers of tulips and roses. That didn't work out for similar reasons. And quite frankly, we have so much going on in Western Europe. We stay close to what we can control.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredible innovation, great people, increasing middle class. You know, what we didn't see was rule of law was a bit of a flexible concept there. So what we thought was a protected player, suddenly there was some other entrant that came in, even though that wasn't really possible and we lost our shirt. So I'm with you in Pakistan. I have a similar experience.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm right with you. We lost a whole bunch more in Turkey. I think we lost around 500 million back to a company called UN RO, which we thought was this incredible kind of logistics, shipping player in Turkey. Remember the days where everybody thought that's the next frontier, great demographic?”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rigorous analysis, and you want to reflect your rigorous analysis with as many great minds as you can. There's nothing as helpful as a good failure. Without that good failure, you cannot become a world-class founder and investor.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building means, you know, and you don't want those kind of fast buck financial orientated early stage VCs that when the shit hits the fan that drop you very quickly. And I learned that lesson very quickly. I think another reason.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The end of it. I learned very quickly a few months later when the dot com bubble crashed and the new market in Germany crashed that the most important thing really was the investors I had on my board because there were two camps. One did this to have a quick turnaround, to have a quick IPO, and the other ones wanted to do it literally for eternity, the big corpse, telefonica, Bertelsmann, they just wanted this to be their window into venture and innovation. And I spent as a young founder, I think I was 26 at that time, all my time intermediating between these two camps. So my lesson learned is this, and I'm applying it manically in everything I do, and I know Johannes does. As a founder, the investors you choose are so important. So of course it makes a huge difference, you know, if you're the founder of Helsing and you choose Daniel Eck, because Daniel Eck understands this long-term business.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just for your listeners to put this in context, you're absolutely right, Harry. This was 1999, so this was rock and roll days, the Wild West of venture investing in Europe, really. And I had been a young kid at McKinsey in New York and had encountered Thomas Middlehoff, who was that very visionary CEO at that time at Bertusmann, who loved Idea Lab, you remember, which is still Pill Gross is still going strong today, and really wanted somebody to back to bring that to Europe. There hadn't been anything like this in Europe and there wasn't anything. And so we went there in 1999-2000. We raised a pretty big round. Goldman was our lead investors. There was a lot of people involved. And if you ask me today, what's the lesson? I think in bull markets, you just gotta keep perspective and humility and not take yourself for a genius. So many of us back then, once we had raised whatever it was, 100 million thought that was.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a free marketeer, I think tariffs are not the answer. We need to work on the underlying issues in our Western democracies to try to raise money through tariffs is not the right approach. In Turkey, I think we lost around 500 million. What we didn't see was rule of law was a bit of a flexible concept there. And quite frankly, we have so much going on in Western Europe. We just don't take the risk. We stay close to what we can control.”
2025-06-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source