The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Jason oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E234 · 2025-07-04 ▶ 1:07:16

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.

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.

Friedberg reversal ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E232 · 2025-06-21 ▶ 1:01:08

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.

Jason oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E232 · 2025-06-21 ▶ 59:37

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.

Jason oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E227 · 2025-05-09 ▶ 1:09:05

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.

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

Chamath oppose ×3 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E227 · 2025-05-09 ▶ 1:10:41

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.

Gavin Baker oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E221 · 2025-03-29 ▶ 15:49

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.

Jason oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E221 · 2025-03-29 ▶ 15:22

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.

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.

Jason oppose ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 32:13

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

Chamath support ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E216 · 2025-02-21 ▶ 1:39:16

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

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.

Jason support ×2 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E207 · 2024-12-13 ▶ 1:11:28

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

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

Friedberg support ×3 ▼ on 📈 The exit drought is a valuation overhang, not antitrust or markets E207 · 2024-12-13 ▶ 1:10:09

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.

Jason support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E204 · 2024-11-16 ▶ 21:39

So the backroom buzz is that Donnie from Queens is going to make M&A great again. Couple of reasons there, Sacks, the wrath of Lena Cohn's coming to an end, Mag-7 sitting on massive amounts of cash, and that cash is growing as people have laid people off and they're focused on getting fit.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E204 · 2024-11-16 ▶ 36:11

I think that we've talked about on previous pods that perhaps there was not as targeted and surgical an approach was used. And as a result of that, it did have a chilling effect on M&A. And so it hurt the small tech environment. And so I think that we need to fix that part of it.

Chamath oppose ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E204 · 2024-11-16 ▶ 24:19

Then on the M&A side, if all you're doing is waiting for Lina Khan to not be there, to me, I think that that betrays what M&A is supposed to be, which is you're supposed to underwrite some industrial logic from first principles where things are very accretive and very accretive things should not hang by a thread on the emotional regulation or dysregulation of the FTC Commission.

Jason support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E194 · 2024-08-30 ▶ 31:07

I don't know what happened to the single and double M&A market, but it seems to be completely gone. Everything from Adobe and Figma to other mergers that could be happening are essentially frozen.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E194 · 2024-08-30 ▶ 35:18

I agree that her approach has been overly broad, and has had a chilling effect on M&A.

her theory is you got to prevent the aggregation of powers, you got to fight every acquisition of note. And the problem, of course, is that actually quells venture capital investment.

Friedberg support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E189 · 2024-07-26 ▶ 9:59

Google wants to accelerate beyond AWS. They want to become the leader and they're going to look for other sizable transactions that will pass antitrust muster.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E189 · 2024-07-26 ▶ 7:49

On Wiz, I think the most likely explanation is that they just want to keep building this as a standalone company. I think they're probably also worried that they can't get the deal through.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Speculative-competition antitrust blocks chill tech M&A E188 · 2024-07-19 ▶ 1:09:53

I don't think that she should stop some of these, what I would call R&D acquisitions, from taking place where there's no accretion of market share, but rather starts being bought because they contribute a useful piece of technology. I don't think you want to shut down that part of the market. Lord knows we don't have enough exits as it is