Sep 26, 2024 · 42m · allin
Thomas Laffont | All-In Summit 2024
Thomas Laffont · 23m spoken Chamath Palihapitiya · 5m spoken Brad Gerstner · 2m spoken Jason Calacanis · 2m spoken David Sacks · 1m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Coatue Management Co-Founder Thomas Laffont delivers a keynote presentation and participates in a panel discussion at the All-In Summit 2024, examining the state of the unicorn economy, the private venture capital liquidity crisis, and the operational discipline required for startups to navigate post-bubble market realities.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 25% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.3 Guest teaching 5.8 Guest disagreement 1.0 The hosts pushing back 2.6
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 26:25 Thomas Counters Gurley's VC Blame
Laffont directly pushes back on Bill Gurley's framing that growth VCs are solely responsible for delayed IPOs, telling him that board members share equal blame.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 21:34 Brad Challenges Venture Asset Class ReturnsBrad Gerstner confronts Laffont with specific 10-year public index return stats (8.7x NASDAQ top 10) to challenge how LPs can justify investing in venture funds.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:09 Public Market Alternatives vs Startup MindsetLaffont educates founders and investors on how public markets evaluate capital allocation across risk-free rates, Mag 7, and AI stocks rather than just peer startups.
The host holds their own ▶ 35:31 Chamath Exposes Investment Bank IPO CabalChamath leverages insider knowledge of boardrooms, Credit Suisse, and Slack's direct listing to detail how investment banks maintain prestige and control over public offerings.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VC Funding Normalization and Liquidity Bottlenecks | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Solo presentation monologue by guest Thomas Laffont. Host scores are 0 as hosts are absent. Laffont presents data on venture liquidity bottlenecks, cash flow deficits, and regulatory barriers in M&A. | |
| Private Unicorn Backlog and Slowing Fundamentals | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Monologue segment detailing the unicorn backlog and slowing fundamentals. Laffont shares metrics on down-rounds hitting 63% and slowing employee growth across private cohorts. | |
| Public Market Divergence and Historical IPO Drought | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Monologue segment analyzing public market divergence and the historic IPO drought. Laffont points out that post-2022 IPO volume is lower than during the 2008 financial crisis or the dot-com crash. | |
| Raising Capital as a Triple-Threat and Long-Term Optimism | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | Monologue segment where Laffont contrasts private VC comparisons with public market alternatives such as risk-free rates, Mag 7, and AI stocks, before analyzing the Databricks vs Snowflake valuation chart. | |
| The Besties Join Stage and Wine Cellar Banter | 6 | 5 | 2 | 6 | The hosts join the stage, beginning with playful wine cellar banter before Brad Gerstner pushes Laffont with hard 10-year public index return data (8.7x vs venture) to challenge why LPs allocate to venture capital. | |
| Governance Breakdown and Regulatory Pressures | 6 | 6 | 3 | 5 | Discussion centers on governance breakdown and regulatory pressures. Laffont recounts Bill Gurley calling VCs part of the liquidity problem, while Laffont counters that board members are equally at fault for failing to enforce discipline. | |
| Direct Listings, Wall Street Incentives, and Valuation Realities | 7 | 6 | 2 | 6 | Brad asks about direct listings versus traditional IPOs, and Laffont educates on the shift toward quant algorithms and retail distribution. Chamath demonstrates industry domain knowledge by exposing investment banking cabals and discussing past direct listings. | |
| The Post-Bubble Workout and Final Takeaways | 7 | 5 | 1 | 4 | David Sacks synthesizes the macro Fed rate bubble hangover and post-2021 venture workout period. Chamath offers a Darwinian hypothesis on the 2022 startup cohort, and Laffont outlines an investor Hippocratic oath to do no harm. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Laffont: Regulatory blocks on tech M&A diminish startup valuations
“One of the byproducts of constraining big companies from buying small companies is it hurts small companies. First of all, it makes them less valuable because if an investor you think that big companies can't buy small companies anymore, you may adjust what yo…”
Laffont: VC distributions to LPs are near all-time lows
“The distributions from VCs back to their investors are essentially at all time lows. Almost back to financial kind of crisis levels.”
Laffont: Coatue counts roughly 1,500 private companies valued over $1B
“There's about 1500 companies, by our count, that are private companies with a last round of greater than a billion.”
Laffont: More tech companies are valued over $1B privately than publicly
“There's more private companies in tech That are worth more than a billion than public ones.”
Laffont: Down and bridge rounds now make up 63% of venture financing
“The mix of down rounds and bridge rounds as a percent of total rounds is up to almost 63%.”
Laffont: Rate of startup exits or follow-on raises halved for 2021 cohort
“The 20 16 cohort, which is the top slide, the green line, after about 13 quarters, 80% had either raised the new round or exited. So 80%. You can see that in the 20, 21 cohort, that number's down almost in half.”
Laffont: Post-2020 IPOs destroyed $225B in market cap versus $84B created
“Of all of the IPOs since 2020, if you look at the value created or destroyed from their IPO price, you can see it as a cohort, we've destroyed almost two hundred twenty five billion in market cap, offset by the value creation of 84. So, net negative as a cohor…”
Laffont: Annual IPO volume from 2022 to 2024 fell below 2008 levels
“The fact is that since 2022, both in 22, 23, and 24, we had fewer IPOs than in 2008 and 2009, the depths of the financial crisis, and 2001 and 2002, post the greatest bubble in history in tech.”
Laffont: Nvidia's Jensen Huang is Silicon Valley's longest-tenured founder CEO
“And you get to back a founder like Jensen at NVIDIA, who many people don't know, but is the longest tenured founder CEO in Silicon Valley.”
Laffont: Databricks is growing revenue in excess of 60%
“He told me, please remind the audience that I'm growing in excess of 60%”
Laffont: Databricks' cloud business has reached $500M in ARR
“And he also gave me a non-public data point around his cloud business, which is now five hundred million of ARR, which was almost zero a few years ago.”
Gerstner: Top 10 NASDAQ stocks returned 8.7x over 10 years vs 5.2x for index
“If you invest in the top 10 of the queues, you make 8.7 X. And if you invest in the queues, you make 5.2.”
Gerstner: VCs must be in top five funds to beat NASDAQ returns
“Because you have to be in basically the top two funds, five funds, to beat the returns you make just by buying an index of the NASDAQ.”
Laffont: Coatue contributed to the IPO backlog by providing private liquidity
“That we were giving liquidity to secondaries and founders and, you know, companies that should be public by giving them private capital, we were essentially enabling them to stay private longer.”
Laffont: Venture industry faces LP backlash if startups fail to IPO
“If we don't get these companies to go public in my opinion, we are as an industry gonna have to face really hard questions with the ultimate funders of our industry, who, by the way, are not our funds, but are the investors in our funds, right? And eventually,…”
Laffont: Active public stock picking has been a terrible business
“Being an active investor in the public market over 20 years has been a really bad business. We are fighting the machines, first of all, right? So Ken Griffin, Citadel, Renaissance, you know, all of these, you know, quants and algorithms, and that's number one.…”
Palihapitiya: Holding Slack shares post-direct listing was a $1.2B mistake
“Now, for example, I went through a direct listing with Slack. What we did not learn is that the best price is the day one price. So if you had investor pressure, the thing that I should have done, it was a probably a 1.2 billion dollar, 1.24 billion dollar mis…”