O'Driscoll: Private market investors lack stop-losses and absorb full downside risk
Rory O'Driscoll · Databricks at $100BN, CoreWeave’s $11B Debt Bet & Nubank’s $2.5B Profit Shocker - Ep.19 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Aug 21, 2025 · at 15:59
Rory O'Driscoll of Scale contrasts risk management in public versus private equity markets when investing in late-stage private mega-rounds.
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“The interesting comment is in the public markets, when things start going south, because there's liquidity, everybody can have a stop loss of 10% and get out, and then someone else can come in and think it's going to turn, and you know, yeah, yeah, you can hold it all the way down, but you can also get out along the way. Well, just to think of the private markets, you don't have that option, right? If you're wrong at a hundred billion, you know, you'll own the thing, and obviously it won't go to, it'll be, if you're wrong on price by 50, 60%, you'll own it the whole way down.”
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