TCV

“Yeah, 1.3.”

“We put, when I was at T. Rowe, in half of it, and I did that, and then TCV, Jay Hogue, you know, did the other half. So this to me is like the classic example of a market-leading company embracing a transition They obviously ended up winning, right? We did tha…”

“Particularly as technology has gotten so big over, you know, now the 30 years of TCV and the 43 years of my career the focus on macro, which is not something I spent a lot of time focusing on really is different. So regulation of tech how do tariffs impact, yo…”

“Think about technology investors, huge focus on SAS, huge focus on all things AI. And huge de-emphasis of consumer based internet businesses. And so I think that's actually a pretty interesting opportunity where one can be contrarian and we continue to see int…”

“Every area and every great company goes through a desert of disillusionment in investors' minds where, where it was great. And then all of a sudden there's people casting dispersions on the sustainability of it.”

“We will hold, you know, our private investments as they go public, the best ones for a long period of time. That's an economically driven decision. You know, we may take one times our money out, but the best companies over time, like Netflix, Spotify, et ceter…”

“Ends up about half our businesses were profitable at the time we invest, half are not, but, you know comp the compound effect of top line growth and you know, very high incremental operating margins means, you know, ultimately earnings are growing a lot faster…”

“And so we have a data intelligence group that and I'll stumble on some of the metrics that is the front end of our sourcing effort. And there's actually, you know, AI applied here where we have massive number of data sources tracking Employee growth app downlo…”

“And then we actually have a three per, three person sort of final investment committee that has to be unanimous on investment.”

“So I have a firm believer in the best quality technology companies. One may at different points in time have to be aggressive on valuation and pay more. But it will be a long-term win. So that's where the aggressiveness comes in. As opposed to thinking, well, …”

“He went and canvassed the marketplace to see what the price of Netflix was, and there was no bid. No, no equity provider. Zero. So I know we did a kind of a restructuring financing in 2001 in order to get them through to the other side of profitability and fre…”

“At the time the IPO, TCB owned 43%.”

“We have a European waterfall structure. So once we return all the limited partner capital, then we start getting our carried interest. And once we do that, we're, you know, and we're distributing stock, we can choose to obtain the Spotify or Netflix shares you…”

“And I didn't frankly think there was much difference between Bessemer and Sequoia and Kleiner at the time, and General Atlantic and TCV, other than some people wrote bigger checks and smaller checks.”

“TCV is tracking every company that's 24 months from IPO and 24 months after. It's a confined universe of 1500 companies, and they go meet with them.”

“About 70% of the businesses that we invest in are at least fifty million of revenues, and, you know, about half are Profitable.”

“The smart companies are, you know, resetting the deck. They're ripping bandaid off because the problem with companies that hold on to some of those valuations is they're going to make decisions that are suboptimal.”

“If you look at the things we invested in, in 21, we like those companies a lot. It may take, it's gonna take us longer. To get our returns. It just is, because multiples have come down.”

“If you're a firm as big as mine or as Devon's, there's a very sophisticated process that gets reviewed by auditors, which is a little different than, you know, with a lot of the early stage guys, so it's hard for us to play around with valuation”

“Two years ago, if you had talked to the public market... It used to be 60 to 70% growth with the -20 to -30% EBITDA. Today, depending on who you talk to, it's like 30 and 10, 20 and 20. Like they want to see both.”

“If all of a sudden you start smacking people on the hand for, if they make a mistake in a risk business, what are you going to end up with? You're going to end up with a risk averse set of, You know, investors and you're guaranteed your next fund is going to b…”

“We have not made any AI specific investments, although I would say. 100% of our companies are leveraging AI in lots of different ways, whether it's, you know, how you touch the end customer or how you make some of your processes more efficient.”

“Investors have began to take this with a grain of salt, particularly in today's market. Nothing is for sure.”

“TCV Had evolved into almost more of a later stage, you know, venture firm. Yeah. Right. That, that held some public positions, but didn't have a hedge fund per se. So I think I had a slightly different view, but credit where credit is due. Their vision for whe…”

“Look, when we were small, we focused on TCV as opposed to ACV which I think is very common. Total contract value. So, you know, a lot of early stage companies focus on this, which is especially the way you pay your salespeople and it makes you feel bigger beca…”

“Less than 20% of the investments that we make are in the Bay Area.”

“And I think if we're interested in a business and it's leveraging technology in an interesting way for either an enterprise or for a consumer, the last concern that you have is, is it a really big market?”

“A lot of times we will underwrite an investment understanding that maybe half or more of the hold period could be as a public company.”

“I think now with all of the secondary liquidity options that are out there, if you want to sell as a private company, even if The company doesn't want to sell, but you want to sell your shares. I think there's adequate liquidity sources”

“Getting that durability of the value proposition, and whether that's competitive modes, whether that's management execution, those are the important things to get right. But if you get those right, I do agree, valuation in hindsight can be a little less releva…”

“The first thing I would say is if you look at the size of the global technology pie, it's bigger than ever before. You know, look at the top 10 highest market cap public companies today. You know, Apple's over a trillion dollars. I think five years ago was pro…”

“It's always more challenging to find places for larger and larger checks. There's just fewer opportunities that are out there, but”

“With us at TCV, we're looking for commercial acceptance. So we're not taking the risk of whether there's a market or the answer in the question, will the dogs eat the dog food?”

“If you're not spending 20 to 25% of the TCV, of the total value of the whole customer's lifetime, in the early days, you're definitely under spending.”