The Ledger
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Jeremy Giffon criticizes traditional finance as extractive leveraged buyout culture
“I do think that it's notable that, like, the current paradigm in which we live, the largest and most important finance firms come out of a Culture of leveraged buyout, which it's extractive insofar as the primary goal is to make a thing more profitable. The co…”
Jeremy Giffon argues white-collar jobs are artificial and non-essential
“To me, it's, like, very obvious that every, certainly every white collar job is, like, totally fake and made up in the sense that, like, they are not contingent for shelter and food and medicine and other necessities, but most jobs do not Touch those.”
Giffon: We are about to see a renaissance of bootstrapped startups
“And I think, you know, I think we're about to see kind of the renaissance, the bootstrapper.”
Giffon: AI will enable 100% annual growth with far less capital
“I think we're about to see like an era of incredibly like capital efficient businesses that by the way, like are not giving up growth at all. Like you can still grow a hundred percent a year.”
Giffon: Founders with $20M revenue and $100M raised are quietly trapped
“A thing that happens far too much that, that no one talks about is all these founders who are stuck. You know, if you have twenty million of revenue, A hundred employees and you've raised a hundred million bucks. You can't just quit. If you're the founder, eve…”
Giffon: Liquidation preferences trap founders who build heroic $30M revenue businesses
“Look, if you build a business to thirty million bucks for revenue, that's like a heroic feat. It's extremely hard to do. And then you somehow end up with eight percent of it under a two hundred million dollar press stack. That kind of sucks. And I don't think …”
Giffon: The largest venture firms are functioning PE shops
“Just as the biggest firms are turning into PE shops, the biggest venture firms are functioning PE shops.”
Giffon: The 'venturification' of Middle America is buying up local businesses
“I mean, right now you're seeing The venturification of middle America and like, as all these venture co's start to buy up, you know, vets and med spas and all these things like venture capital. I'm in like, I'm in the rural Midwest right now. And like, you're …”
Giffon: Scaled VC firms inevitably turn into fee-seeking asset managers
“At some sense, at some scale, you just become an asset manager and really what you're looking for are you know, different fee paying products basically.”
Giffon: Capital allocators realize they can only eat DPI, not IRR
“Gross IRR is, is all well and good, but eventually, you know, you can only eat the DPI and that's kind of, that's what the, you know, that's what the capital allocators are starting to demand.”
Giffon: Every company should consider capping headcount and scaling with AI
“I think like every organization should be thinking hard about whether or not they ought to cap headcount and just, you know, keep headcount at or below where it is and increase kind of headcount, so to speak through AI.”
Giffon: Returning capital is often the best outcome for venture-backed startups
“I think like oftentimes the best outcome is just returning capital, which used to kind of be a norm in venture.”
Giffon: Silicon Valley only offers one product: primary growth capital
“There's basically one product in Silicon Valley and it's like primary growth capital. And you know, once these markets become bigger and more liquid, more efficient, there needs to be a different kind of different just as there is in wall street or like on the…”
Giffon: Pure alpha-focused investment firms cannot scale into giant institutions
“Your business can only really get so big if you're actually in the business of like true alpha outperformance, you can't, you know, build the JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs or something.”
Giffon: Rapidly Cropping Up Startup Categories Rarely Form the Permanent Equilibrium
“I can't think of an example where like a whole class of businesses have cropped up, grown immensely quickly, and then kind of just been the new equilibrium. You know, that, that's certainly not what happened in the dot com. There's some exceptions, but in gene…”
Giffon: My business picks up the roadkill of the venture industry
“My business is picking up the roadkill of the venture industry. The startups, the founders that have triumphantly built Heroic and wonderful businesses and have gained 1,000,010 of millions of revenue and built incredible teams and have a wonderful product and…”
Giffon: Venture portfolios face a severe lack of DPI in the middle
“There's a lot of these, a lot of businesses, a lot of great businesses out there, and a lot of, like, stock founders, and there's more and more of them, and increasingly a lot more VCs who realize that, like, you know there is a severe lack of DPI, especially …”
Giffon: An investor's cost of capital dictates what they demand from startups
“The cost of capital of the people that own you makes a really big difference for like what they expect and what they demand of your business.”
Giffon: Scaling from $20M to $100M revenue requires different leadership than starting up
“A lot of times the person who takes a business from 20 of revenue to a hundred of revenue can be a very, you're looking for a very different type of person, someone who's going to start it from zero and grow it into a huge business.”
Giffon: Senior execs at larger firms are untapped talent for running startups
“There's a lot of C-suite and senior executives at a business that's two or three times bigger than maybe the business you're looking at. And those are people who are like highly capable, has at least some entrepreneurial spirit, but maybe they're not, you know…”
Giffon: Venture Capital Lacks Hurdle Rates Present in Private Equity
“There, there's a hurdle in private equity, and there's no hurdle in venture capital, which makes the whole thing even sweeter.”
Giffon: Making money online in high school predicts a successful founder
“If you made money online in high school, I honestly can't think of an exception to have someone who's done that and has not ended up being like, Quite a successful founder in one way or another.”
Giffon: Sequoia Heritage is roughly the size of Sequoia Capital
“I mean, Sequoia heritage, you know, Sequoia heritage is, is significantly or maybe not significantly, but it's like roughly the size of Sequoia.”
Giffon: Users will consolidate AI model subscriptions to one within three years
“I know like I pay for, you know, whatever, six different models, like that's probably not gonna be true in three years, right? Like there's probably gonna be one that I'll end up paying for too. There's certainly no reason to pay for six right now.”