Private Companies

“Our asset class is five to six trillion dollars of value, and the dynamics around companies staying private longer, They're not going to reverse.”

“I don't think there is actually a good reason to stay private longer.”

“However, if you look just beyond sort of the top 50 private companies, you go from incredibly high multiples to extremely reasonable multiples that look almost, almost like they're very good value investments.”

“Most companies that are private probably have half their cap table that's sellers.”

“I think just like rip the bandaid and more companies should go public. It's good for the markets. It's good for retail investor access. It's likely, you know, likely good for those companies too, to some regard, you know.”

“There's a reason that like margin lending and private companies is not is, is like not a great business because when you want to take collateral that stock, that's usually the exact time when you do not want to hold that private stock.”

“So I think that it's gonna be tough increasingly in a global market to Have as much control over, over the price as maybe private companies have historically had.”

“I think the opposite. The opposite. Because if you kind of relate to what I've said, you know, I feel like I was kicked in the head so many times by now that, okay, I get it. And I feel when you're private, you know, you can try and ignore what's going on and …”

“And I think that, you know, five years from now, The exact mechanisms, whether tokenization is legal or closed-end funds, that's less clear. But what I know is I, I'm very confident that retail investors getting exposure to private companies Will be easier, mu…”

“I think there's an argument to be made that in any industry where they're both private and public companies, the private companies end up being much better run. And I mean like that mostly bad things happen when companies go public and certainly less pleasant.”

“If you help a broad base of startup employees, you will end up with a ton of differentiated data on private companies that may or may not be out there in the world otherwise.”

“Apollo came out, I think maybe today or yesterday with this interesting report that of the firms that have more than a hundred million dollars of revenue, 87% now just by count are private.”

“Litigation around shareholder events are tied solely to public companies. That is not true. If you're incorporated in Delaware, you can be sued. You know, if your shares are trading more freely in the secondary market, you're at risk as well.”

“Our 11 largest defined, default defined contribution schemes have committed to committing five percent of their total assets to private companies by 20 30.”

“As bad as things have been for capital access for private companies in the last few years has been worse for micro caps.”

“It's the same as true in the, in investing in private companies. It's still much better to pick the right company and slightly overpay than to invest in something that is cheap.”

“I think there may be a certain set of companies out there that can pull off what you're talking about before. 99% of the companies out there. I think that's really difficult.”

“There's, it's even worse than that too, because your reputation is like how many people who work for you. So they're all trying to justify, like in my companies, like if it's run well, you're trying to justify how to do something with less expense and fewer re…”

“Private companies are a superior way to compound capital relative to public. It's just that they're not as scalable.”

“There's about 1500 companies, by our count, that are private companies with a last round of greater than a billion.”

“I've often said that the public markets are the buyers. Of private companies, and you got to know them. You got to know them. You got to study them. You got to know what they want to buy.”

“And so we have the world's largest repository of private data of private companies. More than anyone else in the world because we've been doing it for 10 years.”

“In fact, like because of a lack of liquidity premium, you're probably worth less than that public company and structurally, Your cap chart's more rigid, and so you have less flexibility. You can't do any acquisition. I mean, there's all kind of reasons why tha…”

“Private companies are more volatile than public companies, in truth, we, like, pretend they're not at all volatile, and somehow their valuations are whatever happened in the last round some months ago.”

“I think public companies are under invested in understanding how private companies compete. And therefore they're vulnerable to private companies behaving differently than they do because they have a view of the world or they have the possibility because of th…”

“Somewhere in the order of 70% of private companies are probably worth less than their preference stack.”

“There's such a huge price mismatch between, let's say a company's last round of financing and what the macro Is that it's really difficult to invest right now simply because private companies lag public markets in terms of pricing by quite a bit.”

“And it is likely the case that three trillion dollars of value was created via private funding and private companies over the last 10 years.”

“In the US, we have had that effect. As before today, I don't know where the market closed today, but it was up substantially, like, eight or so percent when I last looked. Before today, I think the market was down about 35%, so I wouldn't agree with your premi…”

“When companies are public, they generate jobs at a much faster pace than when they stay private.”

“Public companies tend to be alike in terms of the board experience more than private companies tend to be alike because they do vary so much in size and configuration.”

“In 2011, they were growing on average of a 170%. These are companies that are between one and twenty million ARR. Today, they're growing about 250%.”

“End buyers, i.e. The acquirers or public markets, haven't, you know, been as forceful with enforcing price discipline, and so you have this inversion where, like, public, private companies are worth much more than they'd be worth in the public markets.”

“There is an argument to be made that absent private companies at this point, you're not really capturing what small caps historically gave you because these companies are not coming public anymore. They're coming public as large caps.”

“I think one of the reasons that private companies work well and are working better and better is that the alignment of management and investors is more highly aligned in the private world than they are in the public world.”