The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
01:04:26 · Rory O'Driscoll, Harry Stebbings, Dev Ittycheria
[01:04:26] S0: It points to the thing we've said before. It's just super hard to be developer forward, enterprise forward, and consumer forward at the same time, you know. Interestingly, ties back to the Mongo comment and where your former colleague went to run the enterprise side of Meta. I think that doing one thing well is hard. Doing two things well at the same time is super hard. And I think OpenAI struggles with that all the time. Even on the kind of the product surface area, there's just a lot going on. [01:04:53] S3: Do you remember last week when you mocked me for my buying of stocks in the middle of a show. 26% up in a single week, Rory. [01:05:02] S0: Why did you buy again? [01:05:03] S3: I bought Newbank, and I have to admit, I didn't quite know the Brazilian elections were coming, and they would go in my favor. I didn't know that the Monzo deal would not happen, which would also go in New Bank's favor. But 26% in a week, got a lot of thank yous from people who made thousands and thousands of dollars. [01:05:21] S0: So let me get this straight. You bought a stock and two things that you didn't expect happened and your stock went up and you're feeling good. That's that's the takeaway here. Right? [01:05:30] S3: Well, I I feel more I feel more, you know, cherishable, and we made [01:05:34] S1: money I for [01:05:34] S0: I just wanna say. No. But it is interesting that as a Brazilian based company says stock goes up when they realize they're not investing in the third world country like The UK, stock pops. Sorry. Just being mean, Harry.
01:05:34 · Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin
[01:05:34] S0: I just wanna say. No. But it is interesting that as a Brazilian based company says stock goes up when they realize they're not investing in the third world country like The UK, stock pops. Sorry. Just being mean, Harry. [01:05:47] S2: Harry, can I do one before we lose Dev that I just would love to get his thoughts on? Yeah. I added to this because I don't think we touched enough on it. I loved on the Aura IPO. I thought this was terrible news for venture, terrible news for venture because you could argue this one is overpriced, I guess. I mean, that's an analysis. Rory had a point that Forerunner was selling, know, think them selling their whole stake was a large part of the IPO, which adds some element to pricing. But I just think it's a huge bummer that a company growing 1,200,000,000, growing 74% with pretty attractive recurring revenue portion of it. The IPO got pulled. Like we talk about liquidity is easy and M and A's everywhere and the one thousandth Frontier Labs can be bought for $7,000,000,000 But this one kind of bummed, honestly, it bummed me out that this deal didn't happen. I felt it was under discussed as as something that didn't happen. I don't know what you thought, Dev, on this one.
01:06:38 · Dev Ittycheria, Jason Lemkin
[01:06:38] S1: I think, Jason, I... You know, it's like that old saying Occam's razor. I think we gotta figure out what the simplest answer is. And to me, I think it was probably price. I think... Again, I have no inside information, so... But I think they probably... The bankers probably told management and the board that they could get this deal done at a certain price. They quickly had an oh shit moment, and rather than go through a protected problem... And I I I don't think the optics of someone selling their entire position is great for whatever that's worth. I think it came down to they couldn't get the price they wanted to pull the, pull the filing. That's, that's purely speculative on my part. I have no inside information. [01:07:12] S2: But you really think they, I mean, for sure, but I mean, the markets are pretty good overall and it's hard to grow much faster than 74% at the scale if you're not an LLM. [01:07:21] S1: It's a function of what, what your multiple you think you have.
01:07:23 · Rory O'Driscoll
[01:07:23] S0: I totally agree. And again, disclosure just as you know, we have a small passive piece there to M and A situation, so I was bummed too. But to your point, I think the super... And there was a good piece in The Wall Street Journal on it. Right? And one, just to put out, it is possible that they pulled it because there's an M and A pending or something like that, but let's assume that's not the case. I just put it out there to outline the range of options. I think Dev raised an interesting point. It's more interesting than just over because it gets to banker dynamics, right? We've all seen that bankers are pitching a deal. They want to tell you they want to tell you as optimistic a story as possible. This could be one of those cases where if you convince the board that you're going to get $50 a share, right, when you're trying to get the business, and then when you go out to talk to the investors, you only offer you $40 a share, this is the kind of dynamic that happens. And you see that happen in IPOs, right? And it feels a very subpar outcome. You're right, Deb, I do wonder, I'd love to see what the banker books were when they pitched the IPO and what they said, you know, the price per share would be. And this is the problem. It's always a weird dynamic when bankers are pitching an IPO, because to some extent, there's always the feeling, will you just go for the person who says you're gonna get the highest price? But if he's whispering bullshit in your ear and it turns out not to be true, then you end up in this far worse situation where you think you're gonna get something done, you telegraph it, and then it doesn't happen.
01:08:42 · Harry Stebbings, Rory O'Driscoll, Dev Ittycheria
[01:08:42] S3: I would have hit the bid on price here, boys. Come on, you look at the consumer hardwire companies that have gone before, from your jaw bones to your palatons to your... I mean, hit the bid at 13 and take it out. [01:08:54] S0: Yeah. I agree. What you're saying is the board should have said, these guys told us $30 a share, whatever it is. They didn't believe it, but we didn't believe them. So our lies cancel each other out. We got off at $20 a share. That's a good price. Hit the bid. And, yeah, they obviously chose not to, and they had their reasons. But yes, I think it's very hard to go this far down. I mean, I can't remember that. Did you guys at BladeLogic, did you hit it the first time after you filed? Did you have an extended filing or something weird like that? Or do clean straight out? [01:09:21] S1: No. We got straight out. It was a little wobbly. The market was a little wobbly at the time because that's when the signs of that the debt markets were maybe not as solid as people thought. We went out in July 2007, and then the markets progressively got worse, you know, going into 2008, but we got out.
01:09:21 · Dev Ittycheria, Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, Harry Stebbings
[01:09:21] S1: No. We got straight out. It was a little wobbly. The market was a little wobbly at the time because that's when the signs of that the debt markets were maybe not as solid as people thought. We went out in July 2007, and then the markets progressively got worse, you know, going into 2008, but we got out. [01:09:37] S0: Got it. So you probably would be one of the last out of that class. Remember, had Omniture in, I think, o six or early o seven. But, yeah, you had that Vonage company and a couple of others, then it got thrashed, and then it was done. But, yeah, Harry, to your point, I mean, playing that back, listen to what he said, is that the the debt markets were getting a little shaky. Take a look at The Wall Street Journal now. Sometimes you're right, Harry. You should hit the bid and get it done when you get that far down because there's a lot that's gotta happen between now and the the Anthropic IPO in the middle of November. [01:10:06] S1: I don't mean to be rude, but I gotta go sell some software. So [01:10:09] S0: Yeah. You [01:10:09] S2: gotta sell some software. [01:10:10] S3: Go. Sell some software, baby. [01:10:12] S2: Thank you for the time. [01:10:13] S0: Thank joining the show. It was awesome. We're done.