20VC: Mark Suster on The Biggest Fundraising Lessons for VCs, Why the Correction in Venture is Still to Come, Why Private Equity Will Replace IPOs and M&A as the Exit Path & The Woke Left and a Trump Administration; What Happens?

23:39And then the market, of course, had a huge rebound starting in April. And it was unabated until 2021. But I sold as soon as I made a profit. I just like, I couldn't handle the stresses of it. But let me tell you now, in my professional career, Harry, I in 2018, we'd seen this booming market, right? I started selling. So we sold in 2018, 19, 20 and 21. And I've been public about this. We sold $1 .2 billion worth of positions in 2021 when everyone was writing crazy checks I sold $600 million that year. Why? Public stock markets in November of 2021 software was trading at 24 .6 times NTM next 12 month revenue 24 .6.

24:21If you look at the 10 year average the 10 year average public market 9 .6 the 20 or average 6 .2 so I call that football field. One side of the pitch is like the low water mark 6 .2, the other side the high pitch, high water mark is 9 .6 and we're trading at 24 .6 in the public markets. In the private market it was 50 times NTM to 100 times NTM. It just made no sense, right? So we became a seller. Part of that was you know some companies just exited but part of it was a conscious effort to do secondaries, okay? So I I learned psychologically people are buying, I'm selling. Now, in 2023, everyone was shitting themselves because they had so many losses from 2021.

25:02We did not. We did not just because we dialed back our pace of investments. I don't wanna say like I'm perfectly smart and I timed the market perfectly, but we just had a sense of valuation said, gotten crazy. So in 23, I started buying secondaries at discounts. We deployed almost 50 million dollars into secondaries in 23 at deep discounts at a time where other people were like scared about the market and I'm like, I'm an investor. Do you sell all of your positions? Do you sell part of your position? I know it's dependent on how do you actually, in a run -up, I'll usually sell 33 to 40 % maximum.

25:37At a time, we'll just generally. Generally, because I'm a venture capitalist, I believe in long position. So if I have a company that went from in one case, zero to 600 million in net revenue, like it's hard to get to scale. so you don't want to have your gem sold when you get to 600 million that revenue. But at the same point in time, it was about 3x overvalued for the public market comps. So I took 150 million off the table. I kept 200 long. I had some LPs say, why would you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. If I was a public investor, I would imagine I would do that. Why wouldn't a private investor do that?

26:1070 % of my LPs were gracious and appreciative and thoughtful and kind. But a couple were very vocal and it was hard. One thing that I really worry about today, Mark, is that you mentioned liquidity and getting cash back. IPO markets are not open and the spigot is turned off and Lena Khan is crushing M &A. I might shit, Vanger doesn't want when we don't have the other end of this batch of open. It's funny you say this. When I first got into technology, there was one goal of every founder, there was one goal of every VC, IPO. The problem with IPO, even if you can IPO, there's no liquidity. So it's like a dirty secret like you take a company public.

26:48It's worth a billion dollars You hold 180 million of that billion dollars, but there's no float. There's no one trading the stock until you become Enormous so you're sitting on a hundred and eighty million dollars. Congratulations. You can't get out So that market is shut, but even if it was open, it's not Nirvana, right? That's one channel the second channel strategic acquisition So we all aspire to exit to Google and Facebook and Amazon and whatever in Microsoft. But that market is you've already noted is largely shut. So where are returns going to come from? They're going to come from private equity.

27:23So private equity firms are going to step in and buy assets from venture capital funds. They will either buy a company or they will buy secondaries. So secondaries, the fastest growing part of the market right now. But here's the thing. They're going to pay rational prices because they're professional investors who have to make money that had to make a return. If you're selling at rational prices, how can you pay irrational entry prices? So I've always said like entry price matters. You have to have discipline, right? So our median evaluation on entries between 11 to 12 pre at a time where people are paying 25, 30, 40 pre.

27:59It got crazy. Like in 2021, people were paying 60, 70, 80 pre for pre revenue companies. Oh, sorry, they still all. Yeah. In Europe, we had three 20s on 100 in a week. Really? Yeah for nothing. No revenue, no product, no nothing. So in 2021 and 2022 there were 1200 companies valued for the first time ever at a billion dollars or more in the private markets 1200 okay But let's give you some historical context. Where did the term unicorn come from? I assume you know I didn't leave yeah so she wrote an article in 2013 if you look at 2012 guess how many unicorns there were one That's why she called it a unicorn.

28:41In 2013, there were three. By 2015, there had been like 25 or 30. By 2018, these are net new per year. There was something like 50 or 60. And then fast forward to 2021, it was more than 700. It was like 749 in that one year, okay? So why, the explosion. They were valued at a billion dollars. They weren't worth a billion dollars. How many public market companies do you think worth a billion dollars in the US. I would have no idea. So if I take all of software and all internet companies, there are 343. That's it. That's the whole universe. That includes Facebook, Google, that includes Amazon, all of them, 343.

29:24And yet there's 15 or 16 hundred in the private markets. How could that be? So how many, if you would have made an assessment, how many do you think are legitimate unicools? of the 1221 and 22 that were funded. My guess is a thousand of them will never achieve an exit value of a billion dollars or more. Of the 1260 % were marked by four firms, soft bank, tiger, co -achew, and insight. And I'm not saying they're not smart investors, they are, but there was this euphoria of people just paying prices. But the average soft bank deal, and soft bank, the whole team is gone now, right? Like I don't know if anyone's left that, like all their investors.

30:02And I'm not saying they're bad people either. Like I mean, he made money on arm, he's certainly a smart guy, but they wrote a typical $300 million check into a company at a $4 billion valuation. Of course, I'm making these up, but that's roughly about where they were. Founder took 20 to 50 million off the table and they know they're never gonna be worth $4 billion so that it's a zombie company. So then the employees eventually are gonna figure that out and they're gonna leave. So it becomes even more of a zombie company. there's no even cleaning it up. And so they've just walked away from those investments.

30:34So how many seed funds are there? That are held at 7X, 9X, 12X, TVPI, zero DPI on the basis of these irrational fake markups. Okay, so the question for you is, are they bad for our ecosystem? As you said, they will help a load of seed managers raise new funds. They will give confidence to LPs rightly or wrongly. Are they good or bad? I don't ever ascribe good or bad like markets will be markets and there's not good actors and bad markets There's markets if you look at the over capitalization for example of the telecommunication industry in the 1990s in the US a lot of people lost money there were a few winners But a lot of people lost money but out of that out of the ashes Rose the broadband industry because all that money fueled laying down broadband fiber to the home So there's gonna be some good, there's gonna be some bad, but here's the thing you should know 1998 if you look at venture capital it took two years for the top quartile to go from 1x to 3 .3x Okay, two years think about what that means I have to deploy my whole fund and my whole fund has to be marked up 3 .3x in two years the only thing that could deliver that kind of returns for an early stage fund is momentum It's like not based on fundamentals.

31:50You can barely even finish your code in two years And it fell from 3 .3 down to 1 .4 But it took five years to be marked down from 3 .3 to 1 .4 And this is top quartile. This is not the whole industry and by the time TVPI turned to DPI at the end It was 1 .7. It never there was no dead cat balance. It was flat. So five years 1998, 99, 2000 are nothing compared to the over evaluations of 2021. So we're two years into a correction. I think it's going to take another five. All managers accurately reflecting their books today, do you think? I'm an LPN lots of fun, so I'm sure you are too. The numbers still look pretty high.

32:31Sequoia, Axel, people like that, who don't ever have to think about fundraising. They immediately take markdowns. So we had zero soft bank deals. We had zero tiger deals. with one co -at -2 deal, one inside deal. I'm not saying good or bad of any of those deals, but we didn't have irrational markups in our portfolio. So you either are a fun that never asked to think about fundraising, you just take the markdown, or you're a fun that never subscribed to all the hype in the first place, you don't have as far to fall. But for a lot of people, I think they're not taking the markdowns they need to take.

33:04I mean, look at what is it called of lace works or whatever, it was value that eight and a half billion dollars and it's reported in the press getting sold for 300 million. That's just one of 1200 companies that's gonna go through that or at least a thousand. Think about funds who said, I'm only gonna hold it at six billion instead of eight and a half billion. I'm only gonna hold it at five billion instead of eight and a half billion. Okay, but Mark, have we actually learned anything? I am seeing the most astoundingly ridiculous pricing deal activity on AI companies, customer support tools, they're the...

33:35is no, we don't learn anything. We're doomed to repeat history. So let's also go to the day. But will we even have a correction? Because it seems like heo, Vansha was about to, and then it's like, boom, A. Of course, of course you will have a correction. So let's look at A. If you take gendered of AI companies at the seed stage, I mean, you know any seed deals overvalued. Any, any startup is overvalued because you're talking about a company that has no customers, no revenue, but if you want to do gendered of AI in 2023, 2024, you're paying 44 % premium to do a gendered of AI deal. Remember, entry price matters, exit price matters, at the B -round, it's like 200 % premium, to an enterprise software company.

34:15So let me say this to you, Harry, and this is the hard thing about investing. To make money as any investor, you have to believe something that other people don't believe and you have to be right. So if you're betting on gendered of AI for the first time in 23, 24, 25, good luck making returns. Because even if you get into reasonable companies and chances are you won't. But even if you get into reasonable companies, you're paying a premium because the market has already moved there, the arbitrage has gone. If you were in crypto in 2013, 2015, 2017, you made a lot of money, right? You pushed all your chips in 2021, got to help your returns.

34:51So this is the weird thing, you go to CLPs. LPs wanna talk about the trend of the day because they're hearing about generative AI in the press, they're hearing about it from every VC. Right now, upfront is not doing a lot of generative AI. What are we doing? I'm doing things that LPs are not hearing from other people. I may turn out to be right, I may turn out to be wrong, but let me give you some examples of it's okay. We're putting way more dollars into space right now. Why? If you look at 2005, 2005 was a seminal moment in our industry, that's when AWS was launched. By 2009, the cost of launching a startup went from $5 million for infrastructure, for sun servers, for unix, for Oracle databases, for web hosting, and went from $5 million to $500 ,000.

35:35So you had a Cambrian explosion of startups starting around 2009. It wasn't like VCs suddenly woke up one day and said, you know what, instead of giving $5 million to founders, let's get $1 million. And let's create a category and we'll call it a seed fund. All of it was driven by Amazon. all driven by AWS and it changed the way our whole industry works because you could launch things for 500 ,000. The same thing is happening in space today. Falcon 9, the SpaceX rockets, which are now Relandable so you don't need new materials. You just need to refurbish it. Has decreased the cost per kilogram to launch into space by more than 90%.

36:12So what's happening? You have an increased cadence of things going into space and you have an increase in startups trying to take advantage of that. So there's been more than a hundred spinouts now from SpaceX. More than a hundred they've raised more than ten billion dollars And the vast majority of them are in Los Angeles. So that's why we're super active there We both believe in the market and we have a bit of a home -filled advantage Do you know that everyone they see that like given the cadence of spinouts from space I said the amount of funding is going in it's already a contrarian thesis I should say of all the companies that are spinning out of SpaceX something like 30 % of them are going into space There's people going into energy, there's people going into clean tech, other types of infrastructure.

36:55But what it's doing is it's leading to a moment in Los Angeles where there's a lot of hard tech founders working on things that wouldn't have been funded five or ten years ago. Of course, there are other reasons. There's great VCs focused on it. You have founders fund focused on it. You have Lux focused on it. You have Andres and Horowitz focused on it. But the overwhelming majority of the industry is not focused on it. Do you not worry that we have a generation of formally software investors now moving into hard -tech infrastructure energy? These are fundamentally different games. I do not play this game because I don't get it, like I don't do biotech.

37:28I think I'm going to see huge amount of people like we didn't know five with clean tech lose a lot of money because they don't get it. Of course you have to have skills, so as I look at my practice, we don't have generalism investors, we have specialists in investors. I actually don't believe that much in a concentrated I did fund around one team. We are what I've started calling multi -thematic fund. We have themes, but we have five or six themes. And so we have partners who just stay in their swim line of their themes. So I have a team just looking at space and national defense. I have a separate team just looking at healthcare.

38:01When we started doing healthcare investments in like 2014, 2015, 2016, most people in venture capital are saying don't invest in healthcare. It's a regulated industry. It's hard to make money. Some of our best returns are now coming from that sector. We try to stay focused on what we know. Jews who worry about accident environments for those companies, they are not traditional, there's not like 20 space companies in the public markets, like there is consumer enterprise. Well, first of all, if I define space as rocket launching, yes, there's not a lot of exits. But what is actually happening in space?

38:32The vast majority of what's happening in space is satellites and it's communication, so it's either Earth observation or media or telecoms. New use cases are emerging and they will emerge like extracting minerals or zero gravity manufacturing There are new use cases that will be created But do I worry about X -in environment? I worry about X -in environment for all adventure You're a software company If you become big who's going to buy you? Like who's going to buy all these 13 billion dollar companies? What happens to the M &A environments? Like, you know, we have the CMA in London that blocked Figma London blocked Figma The biggest buyers will struggle to buy the biggest companies That's why I think a lot of those may end up well either you get big enough to IPO and there will be plenty of those Or you end up getting bought out by private equity who ultimately probably combine you with other businesses until you're big enough for an IPO But it's probably easier to get exits at the $250 million to a billion dollar level because the universe of buyers is much greater back to this idea of capital efficiency back to this idea of entry price mattering.

39:36Do you think founders have realized that message? So I think it matters what team are you backing. There will always be founders who are going to be the biggest players in the industry. And those companies, if they're successful, will drive great returns. So, androle, but amazing company like God bless everyone who backed that company. It's really important for national defense for for the United States and for the Western world. And they have really big ambitions and I think it's going to be a public company one day. Do you agree with the thesis of like a founders fund who kind of go instead of trying to be in the category around it regardless of stage just be in the company which is why they're like plowing into open AI which is why they plow into Andrewl just be in the number one at whatever price or you're like uh there's ancillaries around the edges.

40:23I don't know as the answer. I know it's not my strategy. I know that I don't have the skills to do it but look at their history like they've been incredibly successful with that strategy. It's kind of hard to bet against Founders Fund. Their returns have been phenomenal. Their team's been phenomenal. Do you outcome star your plan when you invest? Not really, but we do generally think about what we think the exit environments like and we care a lot about valuation and discipline. Cause for us, I can't plan that Founders Fund world. I'm not Brian Singerman or Peter Teele or any of these guys who have been able to plow $152 million and dollars into a single company and be right consistently.

41:02So it matters to us. You said 1112, Fantry Price. I love your honesty around price discipline because everyone normally says, well, it just matters that you're in the best companies. Question on 1112. Anyone who comes out of a great company now raises 525 from Renderies? How do you do 11 or 12? And does that mean that you're getting different from others? Your question actually is, is there a selection bias? Are you picking companies that are not going to be as good? I don't agree with the premise. I don't believe that everyone raises five on 25 from Andres, and I think Andreson's great for some people not good for other people are median investment pre -money is 11 or 12, but we pay 20 we pay 25 it depends on the founder It depends on how much progress they've made it depends on what we see as the opportunity and how competitive it is Do I think that their selection bias?

41:49No, there are great people who leave companies you have to make an earlier bet I might have been able to wait six months, nine months, 12 months to make a bet. We have to know the founder before they create the company. How often when you break the rules, are you right or are you wrong? I don't think I can really put a number on that. I think post -talk we rationalize everything. We just want to back the most talented founders working in the industries that we're focused on. We want to stay disciplined since 2009. If you take every one of our funds, They've been median between 3 .2 to 3 .5 million dollar first check -in and they've been median between 18 to 21 % ownership.

42:30That's what we do. That's our strategy and we're disciplined about that strategy. We haven't diverted from that. How do you think about reserves? We invest 40 % of our fund, usually 42 % of our fund and we reserve 58%. In the subsequent round or in the subsequent two, three rounds, how do you think about that distribution? The 58 % is reserved for all subsequent rounds. And you know the job of every VC is like let's create three buckets after we write the check bucket one The companies that just clearly aren't gonna work and then you try to minimize the amount of capital you put into those Bucket two are the ones that are clearly working and you really want to back up the truck as much as you can But bucket three also matters These are companies that you really believe have a prospect of building something big and the market just hasn't accepted that yet and getting them over the hurdle matters Or Bucket 3 is also, I don't know, it's kind of just a bit in the messy middle.

43:22It's slower, it's harder, whatever. But my question to you is like, I don't think the rocket ships are sustainable value generators, and I think we overestimate our ability to pick our winners early, especially between Sydney. With that in mind, I question the effectiveness of reserves. Especially if you get ownership like you do. I'll just disagree. First of all, I disagree with the premise about the third bucket, which you kind of say, oh, those companies, I don't know how you characterize it but aren't likely to work. Some of our best returns have come from companies nobody else wanted to fund but they were doing something fundamental.

43:55It just took longer on average of our companies that take longer and that we had reserves for. On average it took six years to raise a growth round. But those companies by definition are more capital efficient because they didn't have access to it. I have six deals that fit this category that return $1 .4 billion dollars of returns in companies that other people didn't want to fund. We're agreeing. I'm saying that I don't like putting money into the rocket ships because they've got huge issues trying to get out of the... I don't think that's the same. So yeah, I got it. So look, we have three things we look at for your next round.

44:30Do I still believe in the market? Sometimes you write a check and a year and a half later you're like, I was wrong about that market, right? The second thing is do I still believe in the team? So sometimes you're like, I got to get the right market, but I got the wrong founder and you can tell the founder is not going to get to the next level or the founding team. Sometimes you have the right market, the right team, but you don't believe in the valuation. And we have been disciplined about that. Like one of our best performing companies, they went from 15 million valuation to 90 million dollar valuation to 500 million dollar valuation.

45:05And it's going to be worth billions. I'm very confident of that. But when it hit 500, it didn't have the traction to support it at the time and we just didn't ride a track There comes a time when it's not effective use of reserves dollar averaging in at that price At that it has no opportunity to go through it almost It didn't make sense for us given the traction of the business But I still really believe in the team and the market and it's just the price I didn't people always say with this business I found his founders founders first when you mentioned that kind of this required here for reinvesting for investing How do you think about market product people look you can have great people, like amazing people, but if they're focused on the wrong market, the returns aren't going to be there.

45:44So it's a combination of the right people in the right market. And I know that's kind of a hedge, but it really is that we're kind of 70 % found driven because I think great founders, if they're pointing at the wrong opportunity, we'll start to pivot towards a better opportunity. So we're probably 70 % found driven when you've got it wrong on founders. What have you not seen that you wish you had seen? Well, if you get it wrong on founders, it can be someone who wants to take a quick exit and they want to make a little bit of money and none of the investors are really going to achieve what we wanted to achieve.

46:17It's the short -termism. We're really trying to bet on people who want to do this for 12 to 15 years. That's extraordinary for someone who want to do it for that long. So that's something that we get wrong sometimes. Mark, what's been your biggest investing mistake? I think we learned a lot for mistakes. Early on in my career, it's exactly what you said. When I had winners, I wanted to pile money into winners. And it worked for me for the first two times I did it. And so, I just thought that's the thing you do. And then I had one big company that was incredibly fast growing. As a fastest growing company I had ever seen.

46:51And so I piled money into it and it ended up being zero. We had an offer to sell the company for $350 million. Founder didn't want to sell. market changed and it eventually sold for zero. Yeah, it was hard. How did you change as a result of that? So we started getting more disciplined about reserves and I started doing better planning and realizing that. What drove me to make the mistake in the first place was ego? I was driven by like, I'm not gonna have a new investor come in and own more than I own because I've done all the hard work for last three or four years. Or this is my winner like, okay, I know I have six million dollars into this, but why wouldn't I have 15 million dollars into this?

47:28I think really ego got in the way and I made that mistake really early in my career And then I started advising the rest of my partners I'm like don't let ego get in the way like we can love the founder We can love the market and just not love the valuation. I think it's quite dangerous for younger and raster's deploying capital If they've never raised money it's so easy to come into venture and be like oh amazing found a 5 million 5 million 5 million Me and you know it's fucking hard to raise money if you don't have the perspective of how difficult it is I think it changes how you think about deployment.

47:57Not just raising money as hard. Driving returns is hard, right? It's easy to write checks. Writing checks is the easy part. Making returns is the hard part. And so I always tell people, like, when you're new inventor, if you look at seven deals and you have great networks and you look at seven deals, you're gonna find three that look good and you're gonna wanna write those three checks. If you look at 70 deals, you're still gonna find probably three, maybe four that you really like to do. If you look at 700 deals, Okay, it's not going to be a three or four. You might want to do seven to ten deals, but the chances that those first three Are going to be the deals that you do is almost zero It really is a numbers game You really need to see lots of deals and over time you start to realize this is something special So I tell people just be patient when you first join venture don't deploy capital too quickly Do you think richer investors make better investors?

48:46They're not scared of downside They don't kind of worry so incest and they're like, ah, you know what? I believe they have that upside maximization mindset. I don't know. But I think like deeply analytical people who are self -confident enough to believe something that other people don't believe, when everybody tells you you're wrong and you're still making the investment, that's what matters, you know? And believe me, I've done for the last 12 or 13 years, I've been doing hardware investments. You know, we did an investment in Reng, we were the seed investor in Reng, everybody on Shark Tank passed on it, we wrote a check.

49:19I wrote a check into Nana, the baby camera company. It produces hardware. To this day, people still tell me like, why would you invest in a hardware company? But Apple's a hardware company. SpaceX is a hardware company. Tesla's a hardware company. Hardware plus software is incredibly valuable. So the hardware actually provides you with a differentiated return if you also have a services business. So for me, it's hardware plus software. And believe me, a lot of people don't agree with that. Does that want to show you how old venture is? If you think about ringing it, it's like a billion X you have 12, 15 % on the asset, you're like 120 million back.

49:53On a 300 million fund, it's like 40 % of the fund. I wish he didn't sell. I understand why he sold. I think it was right for him, and maybe it was right for the market. But I mean, Amazon sells billions of rings now. Billions of dollars worth of rings. Like, I look at what could this have been. Yeah, on our door. Yeah, yeah, they're everywhere. Now, Jamie would argue, and he's probably not wrong, that Amazon wanted to own this market anyway, and Google really wanted to be in this market anyway, and it was gonna get too competitive. Is there anything that you're not asked that you wish you were asked before we do a quick final?

50:29That I'm not asked. Are you worried about Trump? Yes, I am, is the honest truth. I fundamentally don't believe that he cares about democracy, and so that worries me. And I know that a lot of people that I'm friends with don't share that view. But would you prefer Biden in this state? Look, I'm like everybody else. I'd prefer third. I'd prefer somebody else. But these are the choices that we have. And it's not a great choice. You know what worries me? Of course, the extreme right worries me. It always has. But the extreme left worries me too. And they've become so radicalized. And they've really become radicalized against my people.

51:07They become radicalized against Jews. If I could say it to you this way, there's, I don't know, about 2 billion Christian people in the world. There's about 1 .3 billion Muslims in the world. There's a little over a billion Chinese people in the world. There's a little over a billion 1 .3, 1 .4 Indian people in the world, right? Like, this is the world's populations. There are 15 million Jewish people in the world. 15 million. That's 0 .15 % of world population. We have historically, for thousands of years, been amongst the most persecuted people there are. We were forced out of North Africa. We were forced out of Iran and Iraq.

51:45We were forced out of these places. We returned to our ancestral homeland. The land that we acquired, we acquired by purchasing it. We purchased it in the late 1800s. Up until 1947, it was all purchased. Zionism was a movement to aggregate money and convince people to return to their ancestral homeland. It was not a state, it was a British mandate. It was occupied by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years, and then by the Brits, the Brits took the land, and they said, in 1917, the Balfour Declaration said, we're going to give a land to the Jews. The Jews are going to have an ancestral homeland, and there were roughly the same size population of Muslims as there were Jews at the time, and they were granted a homeland.

52:30And to see the far left now villainized the most oppressed people in history that we somehow are the oppressors is beyond absurd, but it happened in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn, allowed anti -Semitism to rise in the far left in the UK, and it's happening in the US, and we need to put a stop to it. Can I ask when you look at the rise of anti -Semitism, we mentioned what we're seeing in Columbia right now. Do you think that's always been that deep -seated anti -Semitism within these people who we haven't seen before? Or is it just funny that anti -Semitism has existed for thousands of years, right? It's not the topic de jour of middle class white people.

53:05You just want something to be asked. Let me give you a historical context. Let's look at Russia. So Russia, there was something called programs which are the Russians have been killing Jews for hundreds of years. In 1917, you had the Bolshevik revolution. And they said out with the leadership who's the autocracy, like the common man, the common people are going to take control of the company socialist movement, right? The Jews were incredibly supportive of that. Why were they supportive of that? Because they've been oppressed for 100 years. They're like wait, we all get to be equal And you know what the Bolsheviks did they turned around and said yes, we're all equal except for the Jews right So the Jews don't have a seat at the table So they started to oppress the Jews the Russians have been some of the most oppressive people killing Jews for hundreds of years So do I think it's new like I would tell you that anti -Semitism So you believe these like white middle -class students who are suddenly anti -themis have suddenly I've always been on He's on us.

54:00I'm almost just, I think it's top it to you. I'm gonna join that brigade for today. For you to be willing to deny that more than 1200 people were killed on October 7th, for you to say that people weren't really raped, that babies weren't really killed. For you to believe that Jewish people who, I mean something like 20 % of the population of Israel is Muslim today. They have elected officials in the Israeli government on Israeli courts and senior positions and for you to call something like that genocide is beyond absurd. And is it a perfect democracy, of course. And do I believe in every one of their policies, of course not?

54:42But it's a democracy. It's democracy that welcomes minorities, that welcomes women and leadership roles. And now suddenly for the far left to try and villainize that, it's like a crazy ideology. Because what you do if you're a university. We've seen universities struggle to manage it in any effective way. Thank goodness you have activists, especially the donor base and the parent base that are starting to revolt against Harvard, against Penn, soon against Columbia, and their forcing change. And I hope that force change continues where education should be a place where all ideas can be explored, but where no single group is targeted.

55:23Like the way that Jews are being targeted now at Columbia, can you imagine any other oppressed group, black people or Latino people or Chinese people or LGBT people being marginalized the way Jews are right now? It's beyond absurd. Right my friend, I know you've got a run. I want to say huge, thank you for joining me. It's been so lovely to do this in person and I hope that we don't have to wait as many as to do the next one. It's been lovely to see you, I really appreciate your hosting. I mean, chats with Mark are always the best and it was so lovely to be able to do that in person. If you want to watch the full conversation in person in the studio, you can check it out on YouTube by searching for 20VC, that's 20VC, but before we leave you today, as face it, your employees probably hate your procurement process.

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56:44With over 4 .4 billion in savings for our customers, Zip is the go -to solution procurement for enterprise and industry disruptors, like Snowflake Discover Lift and Reddit. Finally, a solution employees love to use, where buying things for work just works. Get started today at ziphq .com, slash 20 VC. And speaking of game changer with Zip, we have to talk about Cooley. The global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Coole has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 60 plus years working with VCs.

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57:56How? Well, the van rewards your employees with personal travel credit every time they save their company money when booking business travel under company policy. Does that sound too good to be true? Or Navan is so confident you'll move to their game changing all in one travel corporate card and it spends Super app that they'll give you $250 in personal travel credit just for taking a quick demo. Check them out now at navan .com -4 -20VC. As always I so appreciate all your supporting stay tuned for an incredible episode this coming Friday with ramps, Eric Gliment and the one and only Keith Roboi joining us for a very special duo episode.