Insight
Fishner-Wolfson: Cost-plus incumbents had zero incentive to develop reusable rockets
“There are a lot of big players. They built their business on a cost plus strategy, and they had no interest in turning rockets into airplanes. And that's fundamentally what needed to happen in order to increase access to space.”
Disclosure
Fishner-Wolfson: 137 Ventures structures liquidity as loans to preserve 409A valuations
“We structure these things as loans, so we can avoid repricing the foreign day of the business. We can make it more tax efficient for folks. We can allow people to maintain voting control.”
Disclosure
Fishner-Wolfson: 137 Ventures offers non-recourse convertible loans against founder equity
“Most of what we do
Which are the loans that you're alluding to is basically a non-recourse loan. The person we're doing business with is going to put up some shares as collateral for that loan. The loan's non-recourse. And so they're not taking risk beyond the…”
Opinion
Fishner-Wolfson: Rate normalization won't hurt companies growing 200% annually
“I still come back to the growth answer, which is that if you have companies that are growing 200% a year, that you can overcome changes in interest rates... A normalization of interest rates to being positive, I think won't matter for very high growth companie…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fishner-Wolfson: Founders Fund was not a premier VC firm in 2007
“In all fairness, Founders Fund wasn't one of the premier venture funds on the planet back in 2007, right? There really had been no new venture funds It was not like a trivial thing to raise that fund. People were a lot less famous. Facebook was a much smaller …”
Disclosure
Fishner-Wolfson: SpaceX, Gusto, Flexport, WorkRise, and Curology are 137's top holdings
“The biggest position obviously goes back to the time I was a founder's fund with SpaceX. You know, we're large investors in Gusto and Flexport and WorkRise. I think Curology rounds out probably the top five portfolio companies for us today.”
Opinion
Fishner-Wolfson: Record IPOs do not reduce private tech liquidity demand
“I'm not sure that the fact that there's all these IPOs really changes people's need for liquidity or is dramatically changing the duration that companies are staying private for... So the IPO market isn't fundamentally changing the need or desire for liquidity…”
Insight
Staying private allows cap table control and shields employees from volatility
“The benefit of being a private company is getting to choose who your investors are and who do you want to work with and who do you think is going to be a good long-term partner. And That's not always about price. It's not necessarily the number one considerati…”
Insight
Fishner-Wolfson: Easy capital markets make hiring harder and create talent-driven dilution
“People forget that in times where capital is easier, hiring is harder. And so people have traded one problem for the other, which is that it's much easier to raise money today at quite good prices, but then you're turning around and trying to hire people. And …”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Fishner-Wolfson: Ken Howery raised Middle East capital for PayPal in 2001
“I actually met Ken Howery because at that point in time, it was close to the dot com bust and PayPal was still burning. I believe the technical term is a ton of money, and he was in the Middle East raising money because there was money to be raised in the Midd…”
