📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets

“But I think on the general liquidity thing, I don't think that the thing holding up acquisitions and IPOs is markets. I actually think it's investor and board expectations on valuation relative to where they put money in the last couple of years... They don't want to take these things out and take a 60, 70% haircut on the IPO. They'd rather kind of let this thing sit private and see if they can earn their way back into the valuation that they did the market when they put the round together.”

“That said, I don't believe that what she's done has affected exits very much at all.”

“But there's also a culture thing, I have to say, like in talking to a number of like the leaders of these public companies that were very inquisitive and M&A, they are taking the position it's easier for us to build a competing function, a competing adjacency than do any tuck ins. They just told the corp dev people pencils down and they are not wanting to spend a year or two on a deal when they have a breakup fee”

“I also think the environment has changed quite a bit, where it used to be the case that to do any return of capital to shareholders, you know, or if you needed any kind of large sums of money, you needed the public markets. That's obviously not true today, where the, you know, stable private markets exist... And, you know, up to this point, we have determined private.”

“If you look at companies like SpaceX, they're able to provide this yearly liquidity, which actually is probably better because it smooths out a lot of the vol, and then people can get back to work and just kind of”

“there is great news, I think, for the venture industry. This Google acquiring Wiz, I think this could be the starter's pistol.”

“Yeah, that's a Saudi conglomerate. And so that exited for 3.7 billion. And I think we're going to start seeing some movement, especially with the new administration.”

“I mean, M&A with Whiz and now CoreWeave going public. Rathalina Khan is over. We got to give the administration a lot of credit for maybe removing the roadblocks to M&A and IPOs, or at least people perceive that.”

“But there have been quite a few acquisitions by big companies of smaller companies in the last month. And I think because none of the companies that have been bought have been public, maybe it's flying a little under the radar, but it's happening in an, I think, an accelerating way. And I think this would be very good for the market and animal spirits and everything that we care about.”

“part of the reason is because of this strangulation of illiquidity that's caused artificially by administrations, by regulations, and by agencies like the FTC.”

“there's such a view that like large companies are bad and we got to bust them and we're not going to let them do any M&A. And as a result of that, small companies no longer get bought by big ones. And for me, it's a disaster”

“since the wrath of Lina Khan the last four years under Biden, you know, you had this 2021 spike of IPOs, peak ZERP, a lot of inventory, a lot of risk capital have been put to work for 10 years. And after that 2021 spike, things have been flatlined and companies are preferring to stay private.”

“Lena Conn is no longer in the building and M&A is back on the menu. As are IPOs ... So when you look at what's happening under the Trump administration, look at what's actually happening. The game on the field is three major IPOs, and then massive amounts of billion-dollar acquisitions.”

“So are the institutional fund managers hungry for access to some of these new high-growth offerings? ... And now is there kind of this pent up hunger or pent up demand for new issuances, for high growth tech issuances? Is that what we're seeing? ... And if there is, obviously it bodes well for late stage growth startups that are looking to go public because the demand will be there.”

“Then wait till we see the flurry of S1s that have already been filed. Figma is a generational potential company that's going to be coming. I think we're going to see fantastic assets coming out. I think the market is saying we're open for business.”

“And Chamath, you talked about all this sideline cash sitting there in money market accounts, markets at an all-time high, Uber blew past 88, so I should be retired right now. What are your thoughts on M&A, IPOs? Feels like, man, we've got a really frisky, hot market right now.”