Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:28:11 · Kevin Ryan, Alexa von Tobel
[00:28:11] S0: Yeah. And it's too early to know whether that will really truly be chaos or not, because as you said, we don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough nurses. Yeah. And so if nurses can be twice as effective by using technology, we don't even need to get rid of any nurses. We're just gonna give better care to people, and that's really important. And you're also right. We have a company called Glacier that helps do recycling of garbage at waste plants. Right now, 50% of those jobs are not filled. They can't get people to do it, and so your garbage right now is not actually getting recycled even though you think it is. And this can be done with a a camera and a robot arm that can pick out the glass and the plastic. No one wants that job. It's it's slightly dangerous. It happens in the middle of the night. It's cold. It's terrible. And so feel good about that. And we've also seen, not forget, in the last thirty years, think of the input of computers. When I started my career, which was forty years ago, the guy next to me, who had started seven years before, did not have a computer as an investment banker. He did models for M and A for billion dollar companies by hand. And we introduced computers. It's hard to imagine. It's not like a thousand years ago. [00:29:31] S2: I don't think that job sounds really tough.
00:29:31 · Alexa von Tobel, Kevin Ryan
[00:29:31] S2: I don't think that job sounds really tough. [00:29:33] S0: Yeah. And so if I said to you at the time though, every banker's gonna have a computer, they're gonna be very powerful, Does that mean there'll be far fewer bankers? And the answer is, Well, wait a second, no, there's like 10 times more bankers than there were. So the introduction of technology did not necessarily eliminate all those jobs. You walk into a restaurant and the system is all computerized, whereas twenty years ago, there was just a woman who had a pad of paper and looked at where the tables were full or not. It's not clear that we lost jobs there. So we'll absorb a lot of it okay. New jobs get created along the way, and some are better, some are worse. Thirty years ago, there weren't yoga instructors to speak of in New York. People forget that. There weren't soul cycle classes. These are all mostly new, and tens of thousands of people are doing that. So we'll absorb a bunch of them. It just depends on the rate. If we lost 10,000,000 jobs over five years, that's actually very small in the scheme of US economy. If we lose 10 job... 10,000,000 jobs in a year, it'll be harder to absorb. [00:30:43] S2: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. It's gonna be the rate of absorption. Yeah. And
00:30:43 · Alexa von Tobel, Kevin Ryan
[00:30:43] S2: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. It's gonna be the rate of absorption. Yeah. And [00:30:51] S0: But I do think... What I am concerned about is that, you know, we see in our portfolio, these are tech companies, forward thinking. They are using AI effectively. My guess, if I went in to see what's in the bowels of large Procter and Gamble companies like that, they haven't really implemented AI yet. They're working on it. They're thinking about it, but they are gonna start doing that, and that will start to have a big impact. If I went into a big oil company, are they really using AI as well as they could? I doubt it. So that's where we're gonna start to see that impact, and I think that's a '26, '27, and '28.
00:30:51 · Kevin Ryan, Alexa von Tobel
[00:30:51] S0: But I do think... What I am concerned about is that, you know, we see in our portfolio, these are tech companies, forward thinking. They are using AI effectively. My guess, if I went in to see what's in the bowels of large Procter and Gamble companies like that, they haven't really implemented AI yet. They're working on it. They're thinking about it, but they are gonna start doing that, and that will start to have a big impact. If I went into a big oil company, are they really using AI as well as they could? I doubt it. So that's where we're gonna start to see that impact, and I think that's a '26, '27, and '28. [00:31:28] S2: I think you're right. And my prediction is that as we begin to see bumpy markets and potentially even a pullback, I think publicly traded CEOs will use those moments as an opportunity to actually shed 25% of staff, but really because of AI. Never misuse a crisis. And I think... So I do think that we have some bumpiness ahead between now and a decade away. Kevin, I wanna make sure we talk a little bit about SF New York. As two people who sit here in New York City and run funds that invest around the country, And we both started things in New York City and are loyal and love New York City. And I'm very excited for our thirtieth anniversary even though I was, you know, not involved for all thirty years. I would love your opinion of like what is New York crushing it at and that you feel really optimistic and where should we be worried and we need to pick up the pace?
00:32:31 · Kevin Ryan
[00:32:31] S0: You know, so New York is crushing it, and I think everyone loses sight because already they're having the conversation of, you know, New York versus San Francisco. Last year, we surpassed San Francisco in health care funding. So we're already comparing... And people forgetting that only a decade ago, we were probably one fifth of their size in health care funding. So it's just a dramatic change. You know, last quarter, VC funding in New York was 10 times Miami. Miami is so small, we don't even see it. So so New York is crushing it. Now that doesn't mean that San Francisco is not doing extraordinarily well and is still bigger and is still better on deep, deep, you know, large bets, crazy bets. I think San Francisco is still the best place for that. New York is a little bit more practical. You know, is this gonna make money? Vertical applications. We're gonna leverage off the fact that we have the industry. So, for example, the company I mentioned earlier, Rogo, that sells to investment banks. Obviously, you don't wanna be located in San Francisco. There are no investment banks headquartered there. You have to be here. If you're selling to arts organizations, Madison Avenue, all these industries, you need to be in New York. DoubleClick needed to be in New York. Our clients were all here. So a lot of this is just, can you attract the talent? And what has gone so well for New York is the fact that New York has become more and more livable. In fact, our only problems in New York due to success. Yes. Apartment prices are crazy. Why are apartment prices crazy? Because of supply and demand. Everyone wants to live here, and we need to build more housing, and people are focused on it. And San Francisco has been, you know, not run as well in the last twenty years. I mean, I I feel slightly unsafe when I'm downtown in San Francisco, and I don't feel that way in New York. But New York is... I mean, San Francisco also has a great quality of life. You know, people can live. There's more outdoors. So it's a very good city, but these are the two dominant cities. The raw material for our industries are twenty four to forty year old people from the top schools, the smartest, most aggressive people in this country, and the number one place those people wanna go is New York City, and that's not changing right now.
00:34:48 · Kevin Ryan, Alexa von Tobel
The fact that there were 2,200 murders here in 1990, and I was living here, And this year, that number is gonna be, I don't know, three twenty. It's just staggering. So as long as we continue to to execute as a city and keep having great bars and restaurants and ballet and art museums and cool things, then we will continue to do well. [00:35:08] S2: I once had an entrepreneur in the last month say something to me that actually I think is an an underappreciated dynamic, which is that if you are an SF, your team's sort of head on a swivel being like, where should I maybe go next? Because they're... You're kinda... Tech is the industry, and you're constantly like this. I'm here because I've gotta be the best at it. And as a result, you know, if you're building something in New York, you may actually have more loyalty law and and sort of long term commitment for your team because to your point, these are industry companies in some ways. Right? Your your point of, like, it's art, it's retail, it's ecommerce, it's healthcare, it's fintech, it's finance. You sort of have people are opting into a category that happens to make a lot of sense here. What I worry about for New York, and I'd love your opinion on this, Kevin, is the pace in SF is breakneck. It was not. We we we say AI really helped SF because none of us want a city like SF failing, but it it was in a tough spot during COVID. The the competition, the speed, engineering focus is relentless. And how do you think about that, Kevin?