Matt Witheiler on Why Great Companies Don’t Have to Be AI Companies

0:00I mean, we're living, we as an investor class are living through market whiplash every single day when it comes to AI. It goes from very, very bullish to very bearish to very bullish in very rapid succession.

0:18Peter High: Welcome to TechnoVenture. I'm Peter High, president of Metastrategy. My guest today is Matt Witheiler, the head of late stage growth at Wellington Management, one of the world's largest independent investment management firms. Wellington manages more than$1 trillion in assets on behalf of institutions, individuals, worldwide, and Matt leads the firm's investments in late-stage private companies across technology, healthcare, financial services, and consumer sectors. Before joining Wellington in 2016, Matt was a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, where he focused on early-stage technology investing.

0:48Peter High: Earlier in his career, he co-founded Annan Tech, one of the Internet's most influential technology review sites, before moving into product leadership at ATI Technologies. This combination of operating and investing experience has helped shape his approach to identifying category-defining companies, and he's been recognized on the Forbes Midas list of top technology investors for six consecutive years. His portfolio includes companies such as DraftKings, ZipRecruiter, Coinbase, UiPath, and the fintech giant Stripe. Matt Whithiler, welcome to TechnoVenture. It's great to speak with you today. Thanks so much for having me here, Peter.

1:23Peter High: I'm really excited for the conversation. As am I, as am I. Well, let's begin with Wellington Management and the team you lead as the head of late stage growth. Describe that if you would. Yeah, sure. So if you're not familiar with Wellington, we're a very large asset manager, managed approximately$1.3 trillion in capital, so a top asset manager globally. And we've been doing it for a long time. Next year will be our 100th year as a firm, so about 100 years of investing. And it was actually the roots of public investing that led us down this path of investing in private companies. Because back in 2015, we kind of recognized that the market was changing.

2:08Companies were staying private longer. And in response to that, we said we should take our skill set of being great public market investors and apply it to the private market. And so that's what the team I lead does. As we look after late-stage private company investing here at Wellington, there's seven of us on the investment team directly focused just on that late-stage private market.

2:30Peter High: And interestingly enough, your background prior to joining 10 and a half years ago was an early-stage investor with Flybridge Capital Partners. Talk about the change, and I'd be interested in your perspective, Matt, on what companies are looking for in early-stage investors, in addition to, of course, bigger checks. What are they looking for you to advise them on and help on different from earlier stages in your investing career? Yeah, definitely. I think so. Yes, as you point out, I was an early stage investor for seven and a half years at my last firm where I was a general partner and ultimately came to the conclusion around 2014, 2015 that the market was changing.

3:08there was a new asset class being created as companies stay private longer. And that Wellington was a really unique place for me to invest in that new asset class. And so that's what led me to change. But I think that the difference between early stage and late stage is really pronounced. Maybe I'd highlight it one with perspective to the actual investment kind of process itself. And then secondly, maybe I'd highlight the differences in what companies expect, as you highlighted in your question. So with respect to what the investment process entails, I think in general, if you think about investing in private companies, you really are taking on three primary risks.

3:55Risk number one is you're taking on market risk. Is there a big enough market opportunity here to create a public company or a large outcome? Second risk you're taking on is execution risk. Can you as a team, can that team that you're backing go attack that market opportunity and actually create enough opportunity to actually see that realization? And then I think the third risk any private investor takes on is valuation risk. Can I pay a price today that generates sufficient return in the future? And as an early stage investor, I believe that the two primary risks you take on are market risk and execution risk.

4:33The reason I would set aside valuation risk is if you think about the large outcomes, take a company like Google, it didn't really matter if you paid$100 million pre-money valuation for Google or$150 million or$200 million. You still generated a massive return. So you're really not taking on valuation risk. You're taking on this execution and this market opportunity risk. As a late-stage investor, we take on a different risk, which is that valuation risk. Because at the point at which we're investing, where we're looking for companies that are kind of one to four or so years away from IPO, at the point at which we're investing, these companies have at least 50 million of revenue, usually much more.

5:11They have at least 40 % year-over-year revenue growth, usually a lot more. They have figured out how to execute, and they're clearly executing at an opportunity that is sufficiently large to have 50-plus million of revenue while supporting rapid growth. And so those two risks, execution and market risk, are kind of off the table to some degree. Instead, you're taking valuations. And for us, valuation really matters because our underwrite isn't, hey, let's swing for the fences, generate 100x return on one investment. The rest can go to zero. And the fun math works. Our return math is, hey, we want to generate 2 to 3x in two to three years.

5:49And if we're overpaying by 2x for an investment, all of a sudden our 2 to 3x turns into 1 to 2x. And if I'm delivering 1 to 2x on our portfolio time and time again, I will not get hired to do another fund. And so that's the execution risk or rather the part of risk that we take on as late-stage investors.

6:11Peter High: Fascinating. And I want to return to this point of the IPO, one to four years off. A lot of what you're applying is this mousetrap that Wellington has in terms of familiarity with the public market and helping organizations prepare for that. And I know from our past conversations, Matt, obviously, companies you're investing in could go public, they could get acquired. But the sanctity of the notion of preparing for an IPO means building a company for the long term, not just to be acquired by somebody else. I'd love to talk a little bit further, get your thoughts on the makeup of the kinds of organizations that have that sort of a longer term time horizon associated with them, even at the late stage that you're investing in the organization.

6:54Yeah, I think the fact that companies will and are tapping into the public market is something that will continue and continue for an extended period of time. And so for us, it's a matter of identifying what companies in that private universe will, to your point, fit the bucket of being public companies at some point in the future. And not just for a year or two, but for an extended horizon, to your point, because ultimately the idea would be we can invest on the private side and then we manage a lot of money on the public side. Perhaps some of the public side portfolio managers can buy into that company as well when they are public.

7:31And so I think what we look for when we're investing are companies that are operating inside of a sufficiently large market to be able to support a public company. And we're looking for companies that I think are executing against that market opportunity in a really proven way. And I think are in categories that we feel are long lasting as opposed to kind of trade. So we really want to be invested in, partnered with companies that over an extended horizon to your point can kind of define the category they're in. And if you roll back the clock and you think about some of our investments like a DraftKings, which we invested in early in the private funds life, that's now a standalone private public company in the sports betting market.

8:21Or if you think about Affirm as another example of a company that we invested in that was kind of defining a category in buy now, pay later, and having the opportunity to work with Max and support him and his journey to go public. These are the types of businesses that we look to invest behind and add value by helping them understand what it takes to be a great public company one day.

8:43Peter High: Talk a bit about the categories that you focus on, if you would, Matt, and how you've chosen them. Technology, consumer, fintech, healthcare, very interesting and diverse array of segments that you focus on. Why those four? So first off, it's diverse because we on the public market, the 3 ,000 colleagues I work with who manage the 1.3 trillion on the public side, they are out covering every sector in the public market. And so it's not like the public market is just a bunch of tech names or a bunch of AI names. The public market's filled with companies that, in addition to consumer tech, healthcare, and fintech, where we focus, are filled with dozens of other categories, right?

9:21And for us as a private team, we can leverage our expertise of our public teams to be able to be very deep experts in whatever sector we're looking at. But why did we choose those four as the universe to narrow down to? It's because those four tend to be the companies or rather the categories where companies that demonstrate the rapid growth that we look to invest behind are operating in. And so those sectors tend to be the sectors that can demonstrate 40, 50, 100, 150 percent year over year revenue growth at sufficiently large scale. And at the end of the day, our team, we're growth investors.

9:59We want to be investing in the next generation of great growth public market stories. And so that's why we chose to focus on those four sectors.

10:08Peter High: Can you talk a bit about the breakdown between B2B versus B2C across those categories and how you think differently? I forgive a general question as it applies to a variety of a vast array of organizations that you've invested in. But some of the top line conclusions you have about the differences in the thought process about what makes a great B2B versus B2C investment. Yeah, I think it's interesting as you phrase it kind of B2B versus B2C, because you would think that each category, consumer tech, healthcare and fintech would have one narrow go to market B2B or B2C. And in reality, we have some healthcare businesses that are B2B.

10:48They sell to hospital systems. They sell to physicians. We have evaluated many healthcare businesses that are B2C. They sell technology direct to a consumer in our healthcare business. Same thing in the financial space, you know, whether it's a company that is selling to other fintechs on the B2B side or a company like a firm that I mentioned before that is selling to individuals themselves. And so I think across all sectors, we actually do see some B2B businesses, some B2C businesses. And this is even true in consumer, right? So if you think about consumer, we invested in a company called On Running, which makes running shoes.

11:29And part of our investment thesis, we invested in On Running, was they had built a very strong B2B to C channel and that they sold primarily to resellers who then sold their shoes at specialty running stores and a consumer would buy them. And our investment thesis around on was they hadn't even begun to acquire consumers directly. So let's take that B2B2C and change it to B2C and see if we can accelerate kind of the growth of that business. And that was ultimately something that they proved successful at doing and drove the return if the company ultimately went public. I think what we look for is at the end of the day, the efficiency of the market channel that you are going through.

12:15So it's the underlying economics and the efficiency of those economics. And that is true whether you are outspending dollars on Facebook to acquire a user or you are going to a bunch of doctors, physicians offices to go to try to pitch selling a medical device. And so for us, I think a lot of whether it's B2B or B2C, a lot of the underlying things we look for are ultimately unit economic driven. Are you able to sell the product in a repeatable and economically effective way that can lead to that growth that we talked about before?

12:54Peter High: And talk a bit about artificial intelligence, which, of course, will also have vastly different implications across the sector, as you mentioned, even thinking about some of the companies you've talked about, different ways in which that's applied as well. How do you think about AI across the portfolio and the sanctity of that? Many of your peers as investors in other firms, no matter the stage, but especially even like earlier stage ones, have almost an entire focus on artificial intelligence these days. How do you think about it and how bullish are you on the continued growth of AI? I mean, I think we're very bullish on AI.

13:27We have a number of investments in the pure AI space, and we're bullish on things outside of AI. So let me disaggregate these just momentarily, because I think it's tempting to say AI and say that falls in the tech bucket. As you said before, we invest in consumer tech, healthcare, and Zintech. And absolutely, there are some investments that we've done, companies like Anthropic, that are in the tech bucket that are AI businesses. But there are plenty of companies that are leveraging AI that are outside of just the technology bucket that we've evaluated. So if you think about, you know, some company that's applying maybe AI and applying it to the healthcare space, we're not invested in companies like Abridge, which is doing medical transcription, a great business that we spent a lot of time with, or a company like Open Evidence, which is providing a chat GPT type of interface and knowledge base for physicians.

14:25Those are companies that are healthcare businesses. Their end customer is a physician or a hospital network or payer. They are healthcare businesses, but they are leveraging AI to do something very different in healthcare. And so for us, disaggregating what is actually just pure AI and what is AI leverage into other categories is something that is really fascinating for us to think about. And I believe applies across all sectors we invest in, whether it's consumer tech, healthcare, or fintech. That being said, we also believe that you don't have to be a great AI-enabled business to be a great public company.

15:05If you think about, you need to go back to that On Running example. On Running is a product company. They make and sell products. We have another company in the portfolio called Quince, which is similar. They are an e-commerce marketplace that sells goods to consumers. So are they an AI business? No. They are using AI to make customer support less expensive, but they are not an AI business. And guess what? That is okay. And that's OK, because if you look at the public market, the vast majority of the public universe, the vast majority of market cap is in companies that are at X outside of AI and technology.

15:48And, you know, Nike, although maybe not the best, most recent example, just from a performance perspective, is still a very large market cap business and, again, has nothing to do with AI. So for us, excited about AI, I think there are implications across all the sectors we invest in. But because of where we as a private team sit and the full picture that we can benefit from, having seen both the private side and the public side, we can say it's okay to also be not AI and still be a great public company.

16:17Peter High: Phenomenal. Yeah, very interesting. I appreciate you sharing that rationale. As a late stage investor, the decision to go public will be clearer and more present. And therefore, the implications of the economy and the health of the public markets also weigh in perhaps a bit more than an early stage investor would, where you have a decade or perhaps even more these days between the point at which you're investing and realizing some sort of event, a public offering or an acquisition some stage down the road. I wonder, as a result of that, how you think about the health of the economy currently and the potential people, of course, refer to an AI bubble and the potential of it bursting.

16:55Peter High: I wonder how you feel about that. And also, as somebody who's been investing for a while, how prior market cycles or innovation cycles from the internet to various cloud, mobile, et cetera, educate the way in which you think about the ways in which this may continue to evolve? I mean, we're living, we as an investor class are living through market whiplash every single day when it comes to AI. It goes from very, very bullish to very bearish to very bullish in very rapid succession. And so I think as an investor, you need to think about, okay, what is your anchor? Like, what are you thinking about not where the waves are, but where will you be stationed across a horizon?

17:46And I think, I believe that the fundamental anchor is AI is a transformational technology that is resulting in ROI positive spend. And if you take that point of view, you take the point of view of, yeah, there'll be cycles, even very rapid cycles where the market is up, the market is down with respect to AI and technology. And that's OK, because we're not taking a two week view or a two month view. We're taking a five, 10 and maybe 20 plus year view. And I think with respect to AI, we believe that the long term view, that anchor point is that AI does represent a transformational technology shift and that it will continue to accrete value over time, even though there may be this near term whiplash around where the market is perceiving AI to be and where the momentum may go going forward.

18:48And with respect to kind of thinking through other cycles, I was an entrepreneur during the dot-com days, which was a blast. And in that period, we were in the process of selling our company. Ultimately, the deal didn't transpire. We ended up selling it a decade later. But in the first iteration of selling the business, we were valuing the company on eyeballs. That is not a joke. We had some revenue, but we were really just saying, hey, look how much traffic we have. And therefore, if you put more ads on this thing, look how much revenue we're able to generate. This is 2001, 2002. And that bubble, having lived through it, feels very different than the bubble we're going through today.

19:34And the reason for that is because today's bubble is backed up with actual real meaningful revenue. So this isn't a, oh, if X, Y, and Z happens, we'll be able to generate a lot of money story. This AI story is we are seeing, I've been investing now for 20 years. I work with people around me who've been investing for 30, 40 years. And we're talking about revenue growth and transformation of technology that I haven't seen, that my colleagues haven't seen. The ramp, you take Anthropic as an example. And I think the last public numbers that Anthropic released were, I think, around the 40-ish billion dollar ARR range.

20:25And they have also publicly stated that they started the year at$9 billion of annualized revenue. So they went from$9 billion of annualized revenue in January to$40-something-ish billion, reportedly, as of May slash June. And if you think about that scale in the rapid growth of that business, which, by the way, outpaces the ARR growth that Google added in the first half of the year, I think you have to go back to like, I don't know, Standard Oil or Union Pacific Railroad or like some paradigm that nobody around me has actually invested through to find this level of growth and this level of traction with real spend behind it.

21:08So I fundamentally believe that we are in a different spot than we have been through past technology cycles and that it is more likely than not that this will actually continue to accelerate and continue to grow over the next, you know, 5, 10, 20 years. It will be an increasing part of our lives.

21:29Peter High: Very interesting. interesting. Talk a bit about the advice you give organizations you invest in as they prepare to go public. Very different motions, different responsibilities, obviously quite literally need to be more public in terms of and transparent as to their performance as a result of the move. Talk a bit about how you help them shape that evolution to ensure that they are hitting the ground running once the white hot lights of the public market are fixed on them. Yeah, for sure. I think to first off, start with the like, okay, why will they ever go public in the first place? The companies we're investing in want to go public.

22:07And that's because the entrepreneurs that we're backing have aspirations to run their company for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, however long that runway is. And the scale and amount of capital to deliver on those visions are not available in the private market. And so there is a big force for ultimately going public. Now, can you wait longer in the private markets before ultimately going public? Unquestionably, that's how you end up with SpaceX at a$1.5 trillion market cap in the public market, having been a private company until a couple of months ago. It's because they stayed private longer.

22:48But it wasn't like they said, we're never going to go public. They said, we're going to go public, except we're going to be much larger. And the numbers suggest that from just an availability of capital perspective, if you want to pay your employees and give them liquidity, your founders, your investors get access to more and less expensive capital, the only way you can really do that scale is in the public market. And the easiest way to wrap my head around this is to think about the volumes associated with each. And in an entire year of trading in the private market, so all the liquidity, all the volume that happens in a year of trading in the private markets, that same volume happens in just one week of trading in the public markets.

23:37And so every single week, the public markets transact and have liquidity to the amount that takes the full year in the private markets. And so there is this big push to go public. It may be staying private longer, but ultimately going public. And so if it's a when, not an if, then the question is, okay, in that ultimate goal to go public, what do I need to be doing? I think some of the things that we spend a lot of our time with companies on is one, helping to articulate the story to a public market investor, which is increasingly important And as you think about novel technologies and novel business models coming to market, if you rewind the clock back to that Affirm example I gave before, when Max and Michael were on the path to going public, they needed to explain to the public market what buy now, pay later was, because that did not exist.

24:34and it would have been easy for a public market investor to say like, oh, this is another credit card company. But the economics, the value proposition, all of it was very different to a credit card company. And so working with the team at a firm in how to tell that story was really important. And you think about today, you think about a company like Anthropik. Nobody has seen a large language model company go public. So in the implications of how do I tell the story in the public market, that is one area that we can be helpful. I think some other areas we can be helpful are really stressing the importance of this beat and raise mentality.

25:10In the private markets, you put a number out, you miss a number, or maybe you get some upset board members, but that's kind of it. In the public market, you put a number out, you miss that number, and your stock is down massively. And so getting in this cadence of beat and raise every single quarter, it's not a muscle that you can develop in a quarter or two before going public. It's a muscle you have to develop over time. And so really helping our companies think through, okay, how do I make a plan that is very beat and raisable so that when I do go public, I can show those numbers and make sure that I've got confidence that I'll be able to hit or exceed them.

25:46And it continues through IPO S1 drafting and what metrics do you disclose in your S1 versus your test of the water versus your roadshow, because investors have different levels of what information they'll want to see on a recurring basis. How you stage that information flow is really important. So needless to say, as a$1.3 trillion asset manager, we have a lot of experience as to what it takes to be a great public company.

26:16Peter High: And what does that mean? Does it mean that the executive that's most likely traded out as the CFO to prepare for some of what you've described? Are there certain You mentioned the CEOs, for example, they have a desire to be there for the foreseeable future. They're not looking to go public and leave the company. That's not a very wise move. But as you think about the rhythms of what's different in what you've just described, are there certain personas that tend to be professionalized, for lack of better terminology, or bringing in adult supervision, somebody who's seen what the other side of this looks like to provide guidance for the path forward?

26:48Definitely. So first off, I'd make the observation that for us, for our style of investing, we have seen the most success. And, you know, we've invested on the private side in 120 companies. We've seen the most success in companies that have the original founder somewhat involved in the organization on an ongoing basis. Now, that could be CEO. That could be president. That could be CTO. But that founder tends to still be involved. I think, to your point, where we do tend to see one upgrade is in that CFO role. And sometimes at the point at which we arrive, think about Databricks. When we invest in Databricks, they had Dave Conte, who was public company CFO at Splunk, like very sophisticated public company CFO, in the seat, exceptional CFO.

27:40He had already been brought in. But in other companies that we've invested in, that CFO may not be in the organization. And so to your point, finding somebody who can augment that CFO or perhaps come in and replace that CFO and provide the here's what it takes to be a public company CFO tends to be one area that does level up. And then all the associated roles around that, whether it's on the controlling side, on the accounting side, on the IR side, those tend to be the areas where people go back to the well and go find people who've done it before.

28:14Peter High: Very interesting. I want to return to AI for a moment longer. One of the fascinating insights you shared last time we spoke was that your fintech investments are some of the most isolated from an AI perspective, I believe is the way you put it. And of the four major categories, the one that perhaps has the least sort of AI-centric activity. Talk a bit about that as it may be counterintuitive to those maybe who are less informed as to the state of the art in fintech. But we'd love to have you peel back that onion if you would. Yeah, sure. So I think when we think about fintech and think about the types of fintech investing that we do, which, again, is late stage, I would say for the most part, AI has been a supplement, but not like a core enabler of these fintech businesses.

29:02I think potentially the area where AI is impactful to fintech would be like automated portfolio allocation, automated stock picking, things like that, which I would imagine will be a thing in the future. But one of the things that you heard me say before is we're looking for companies that are late in their journey, you know, IPO in the next one to four or so years, 50 plus million of revenue. And so there are, I would imagine, dozens of companies that are taking AI, applying it to fintech, and using that to do better portfolio management or better stock picking and whatnot. But those are on the earlier stage side for what we do.

29:43Where we have seen AI exposure at our stage tends to actually be market-driven AI exposure, where obviously the entire public market today is exposed to AI. And the NASDAQ, when semiconductors are doing poorly because sentiment shifts on AI, semiconductors spend, the market goes down or the NASDAQ goes down. And when the market's excited about it, the market goes up. That tends to be the AI exposure that we see in our fintech portfolio. So some more second order effects of AI than direct order effects of AI. But I do think those direct order effects of AI are coming. They just haven't hit our scale yet that we've seen.

30:21Peter High: What's the geographic distribution of the companies you've invested in? We're all over the place. We generally are quite North America focused. So about 70 % of the portfolio tends to be North America. but we've been active in regions outside. So we have a number of European companies in the portfolio, number of Indian companies in the portfolio. Korea is a market we've been active in, Japan as well. So we have been active internationally for sure. Very interesting. And you're based in New York. Talk about the advantages of being based in New York, where again, so many investors are out on the West Coast.

30:58I think for New York, the nice thing about being in New York is, one, it's a great city. Two, everybody comes to New York, right? So if you're a big company and you're looking to go put a fundraise together, odds are you're getting on an airplane. And if you're getting on an airplane, there is a 100 % chance that New York is one of the places you are stopping if you are going to talk to investors. And that applies whether you're a California company that's saying, hey, I'm, you know, I have an office in New York and next time I'm in New York, I should meet some investors. or if you're European or Israeli or even a Southeast Asia company, you are likely stopping in New York at some point.

31:42And so to be able to sit here in Manhattan and have the opportunity to be with these great entrepreneurs from all over the world, because New York is such a center hub, has been really beneficial.

31:53Peter High: That makes a lot of sense. I wonder, Matt, who do you find influential? Who influences your thinking, people you read, people you listen to as somebody who by nature needs to look around corners and anticipate what the future might hold as you think about investments you might make. In addition, of course, to the great learning you have simply by meeting with a vast number of entrepreneurs who are shaping that future. What's your intellectual diet like that you might recommend to others? Well, I'm going to talk about one that's hard for others to replicate, and then I will talk about the rest.

32:29In the hard for others to replicate, I think the biggest mentor group, the biggest learning that I take is I operate inside of Wellington. as I mentioned before, 3 ,000 employees who are infinitely smarter than I am. And so one, to just be able to see the full picture by sitting in every morning, we have a morning meeting, we talk about topics of the day, varies from consumer spending behavior to obscure parts of the metal supply chain. But just to be able to hear the dialogue of what people are thinking at how they think and prosecute as other investors has been incredibly valuable for me as an investor to be able to tap into that knowledge base and to tap into that expertise.

33:15I think from an outside Wellington perspective, well, first off, we do publish a number of our thought pieces on the website. But in addition to that sort of content, I think to be an investor in any private high growth investing firm or companies that are looking for those sorts of profiles, you have to be active on X, you have to be active on threads, you have to be reading, you know, whether it's for me, some of the earlier stage thought pieces from some of the great firms that are out there in their VC blogs, or some of the threads or X dialogues that some other late stage public managers have.

33:59I try to consume a diet of that when I am trying to understand, like, where do people think the world is going and help use that to influence my worldview of, like, where do we as a team think the world will end up?

34:15Peter High: And any new conclusions you're drawing as you contemplate investments to come, Matt? We've talked about a number of the great companies you've invested in and the rationales behind them, the success stories. What excites you most as you look to the future?

34:31I think AI excites me and AI makes me incredibly nervous. What goes up can go down very quickly. I think as we as a team look at the landscape today, I think we can't help but be really excited about the future for what we are doing. And the reason for that is twofold. Reason number one is this category, late stage private companies, has grown massively from when I started here 10 and a half years ago. I think the universe, if you think about companies that raise at least $150 million in the financing at one individual financing, if you say that's a late stage company, whether that is or isn't, it's kind of besides the point, but you need a way to measure this.

35:16that universe has grown like over 6x from 10 and a half years ago. And it's presented this opportunity set where we can actually come into companies even later in their journey and still see what we believe to be the sufficient return to make it a fit for our fund. So you think about investing in a company like Anthropic, which we invested in$170 billion valuation in September of last year, it would have been impossible for me in 2016, in January of 16, when I started to even wrap my head around investing in a private company that was valued at$160 billion. One, because those companies didn't exist.

35:55That wasn't a thing. And two, to generate the return we needed, it would have been really hard for us to say like, okay, great. This needs to be a whatever, $500 billion public company. Look at the public market. There's not that many$500 billion public companies. And fast forward to today, what you're seeing is that one, companies are staying in their journey longer on the private side, meaning that they've got more scale. And two, the public markets changed dramatically. When I started here, there was$0 trillion plus public companies. And today we're sitting, and I think there's like$14 or$15 trillion plus public companies, including NVIDIA, which is north of$4 trillion of public market value.

36:37So the market has just changed dramatically over that last 10 and a half years as well. So that gets us really excited. The universe is bigger and continues to grow. This thesis that companies are staying private longer, but ultimately going public has proven out. And then you layer on top the fact that we believe that whether this AI thing is applied directly to tech or to other sectors, as we talked about earlier, there is a technology transformation underway today that looks very different than certainly the last 10 and a half years or for me personally, 20 years that I've been investing. And so to combine the secular trend of companies saying private longer, more opportunity with this new technology transformation in AI, I think creates a really exciting path ahead.

37:26Peter High: Well, compelling vision, certainly, Matt. Thank you so much for a tremendous conversation. Fascinating to learn from you and the areas that you're investing in, and those that excite you and what might be to come. I appreciate you taking time with me today. Thanks so much. Really great talking and appreciate the conversation. Thanks for listening to TechnoVenture. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you next time.