Ep11. Coatue Conference Recap, Tesla & ISS Controversy | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner

发布时间 2024-06-22 18:12:48 来源

这个播客节目是两位分析师比尔和布拉德参加在圣巴巴拉举行的Co2的“东梅到西”2024年会的讨论。他们深入探讨了会议提出的关键主题和见解，重点关注公开市场和风险投资市场，尤其是在新兴的人工智能革命背景下。对话一开始，两位主持人总结了会议的开幕致辞，重点关注公开市场。演讲重点提出了两个关键问题：我们是否正处于人工智能泡沫之中？软件是否已死？他们讨论了一项现场投票，该投票显示，去年有很大一部分与会者认为存在人工智能泡沫，但鉴于英伟达等公司的持续崛起，这种情绪似乎有所减弱。这引发了关于当前少数关键参与者在市场上的主导地位是否具有可持续性的讨论，演讲认为英伟达的盈利增长证明了其估值合理，表明我们可能并未处于泡沫之中。随后，他们过渡到风险投资市场，指出风险资本投资在经历了2021年的过度繁荣后正在恢复正常，预计今年的投资额约为当时的三分之一。专注于人工智能的公司正在吸引比非人工智能公司更高的估值和更大的融资规模，这表明投资者对该领域有着浓厚的兴趣。一个令人担忧的问题是，由于高无风险利率和比特币等具有吸引力的替代选择，大量独角兽公司可能无法获得新的融资。这意味着二级市场的交易价格折价50-75%，暗示估值需要调整。讨论中，一位演讲者提出，公司需要达到100亿美元的市值才能上市。这引发了关于风险投资支持的公司以及风险投资商业模式的讨论，如果创始人希望实现10亿美元的收入，并且必须筹集5亿到10亿美元才能实现增长。他们讨论了潜在的流动性路径，但最终得出结论，公司上市是为了避免成为小型股。银行家需要专注于让一些收入达到1亿美元的独角兽公司上市。就谈话的主题而言，如果拥有OpenAI这样收入达到40亿美元的公司，你会选择上市吗？比尔和布拉德随后深入探讨了技术方面的趣闻轶事，重点介绍了一家18人公司的进步。他们讨论了人类替代技术的进步，以及程序员如何通过接触人工智能技术参与其中。在未能重新发明的情况下，最好的做法是学习如何使用。相反，市场上的输家是谁？是那些迟迟没有采用互联网的公司。对话随后转向了关于特斯拉的股东投票，指出埃隆·马斯克第二次赢得了投票。讨论涉及机构股东服务公司（Institutional Shareholder Services）和Glass Lewis反对该投票，对话也转向了特拉华州和特斯拉向德克萨斯州迁移的问题。争论的焦点是一家律师事务所要求50亿美元的赔偿，这是否会影响上市。对话还涉及了劳伦斯·萨默斯，以及未来10-15年世界将会是什么样子。话题深入探讨了去全球化、技能差距，以及关于特朗普最近在为雇主寻找合格候选人方面发表的言论。

The podcast features a discussion between two analysts, Bill and Brad, who are attending the Co2's EastMe to West 2024 conference in Santa Barbara. They delve into the key themes and insights presented at the conference, focusing on the public and venture markets, particularly in the context of the burgeoning AI revolution. The conversation begins with the presenters summarizing the conference's opening remarks, focusing on the public markets. The presentations highlighted two key questions: Are we in an AI bubble, and is software dead? They discussed a live poll that showed a significant portion of attendees believed in an AI bubble last year, a sentiment that has seemingly diminished given the continued rise of companies like Nvidia. This led to a discussion about the sustainability of the current market dominance by a few key players, with the presentations suggesting that Nvidia's earnings growth justifies its valuation, indicating that we may not be in a bubble. They then transitioned to the venture markets, noting that venture capital investment is normalizing after the excesses of 2021, with investments this year expected to be around one-third of those levels. AI-focused companies are attracting significantly higher valuations and larger funding rounds than non-AI companies, indicating a strong investor interest in the space. A point of concern was raised for the large number of unicorns that may not be able to raise new funding rounds due to attractive alternatives like high risk-free rates, and Bitcoin. This implies secondary sales are occurring at prices discounted by 50-75%, with an implication that valuations are in need of adjustment. The discussion touched on a statement by one of the presenters, suggesting that a company needs a $10 billion market cap to go public. This led to debate about the implications for venture-backed companies and the venture capital business model, if founders want to achieve a billion in revenue and have to raise 500 million to a billion to grow to that level. They discussed potential paths to liquidity, but concluded that companies are going to IPO to avoid being micro-caps. A banker needs to focus on taking public some of the unicorns at 100 million revenue. In terms of the topic of the conversation was would you IPO if you had OpenAI at 4 billion in revenue? Bill and Brad then dive deeper into anecdotes on the technological front by highlighting the advancements from 18 person company. They discuss the advancement of human replacement, and how a programmer could get involved by being exposed to AI tech. The best move in failure to reinvent is to learn how to. In contrast, what are the losers in the market, companies who are slow to adopt the internet. The conversation then shifted to the shareholder vote regarding Tesla, noting that Elon Musk won the vote for the second time. The discussion touched on Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis being against that vote, and the conversation moved towards the state of Delaware, and Tesla moving towards Texas. The point of contention was on a legal firm requesting 5 billion dollars in compensation, and if that will impact going public. The conversation touches on Larry Summers, and what the world will look like in the next 10-15 years. The topic delved into de-globalization, skill gaps, and a discussion on recent remarks from Trump in getting qualified candidates for employers.

摘要

Open Source bi-weekly convo w/ Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner on all things tech, markets, investing & capitalism. This week they ...

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He implied, do you tell me if I got this wrong? He implied that in the modern era you need to be $10 billion to go public. Yeah. Market cap. Yes. Which. If it's $10 billion or bus, that's a bitch, man. Come on. Hey, man. How you doing, Brad? It's good to be here. It's like a destination pod, just here in Santa Barbara. This is our first destination podcast. We're coming to you live from Co2's EastMe to West 2024 conference. Indeed. Were you up or down last night? I did okay. Okay. Hey you. It was a good night. Yeah, it was a good night. Hopefully, I don't think we were the ringers, you know, at the time. Well, tell it and tell the audience a little bit about what is EastMe's West. It's a really gracious invitation. Yeah. You know, we've been doing this for years with Co2 down here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it?

他暗示说，在现代社会，要上市公司的市值需要达到100亿美元。对，就是市值。要是没达到100亿就别想，那真是太麻烦了。嗨，布拉德，你好吗？很高兴在这里。就像一个目的地播客，现在我们就在圣巴巴拉。这是我们的第一个目的地播客，我们正在CO2的2024年EastMeetsWest会议上现场报道。昨晚过得怎么样？我还可以。不错的夜晚。希望我们不是那时的主打明星。能不能给观众讲讲什么是EastMeetsWest？这是一个非常慷慨的邀请。我们多年来和CO2在这里一直举办这个活动。你能不能给我们简单说说呢？

Yeah, so, um, Philippine and Thomas LaFont, who run Co2, started a conference. I'm going to guess about eight or nine years ago. Yeah. Tyler eats me to West and at the time, it was really about bringing together entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and the West with entrepreneurs from China. Yeah. And some of my best relationships with some of the smartest, coolest tip is Chinese. And entrepreneurs came here and the access was just unbelievable. Yeah. Literally once in a lifetime opportunity. And they've kept the conference up. It's on my list of must attend. Yeah. You get a combination of incredible founders and some great CEOs. Such an adellis here, Daris here, Andrew from EA is here. And it's one of those conferences. Like when I entered the industry years ago at Agenda, the Agenda conference, which Stuart Alsop ran, you know, Larry Allison and Bill Gates and Scott Winele would stay through the conference. So they're around. Incredible.

好的，所以，嗯，负责Co2的Philippine和Thomas LaFont大约在八、九年前开始举办了一个会议。是的。当时Tyler把我带到了西海岸，这个会议的初衷是把来自硅谷和西方的企业家与中国的企业家聚集在一起。是的，我与一些最聪明、最酷的中国企业家建立了一些最好的关系，这次交流的机会真是难以置信，可以说是千载难逢的机会。他们一直坚持举办这个会议，所以它是我必参加的活动之一。你可以在这里见到一些不可思议的创始人和优秀的CEO，比如Adel、Daris，还有EA的Andrew也在这里。这是那种让我想起我刚入行时参加的会议，比如Agenda会议，那时由Stuart Alsop主持，Larry Allison、Bill Gates和Scott Winele也会参加，真是让人印象深刻。

Today, most conferences, the key notes come in and go out. Yeah. Everyone stays. And so it's more intimate. You learn more. You get to talk to more. Peter, they do a lot of these one on ones. Right. Where they set it up so that you can maximize individual connection. It's just incredible. Anyway, I'm super, you know, thankful to them for having us down and for letting us do this here. It's a big investment by them. And I think one of the things that's underappreciated outside of Silicon Valley is there's this view that this is all zero sum. Right. That I win. You lose. You know, we're all very competitive. We all like to win whether we're playing poker, whether we're playing hoops, whether whether we're doing this. But really, I think it like this is a demonstration of positive sum.

今天，大多数会议的主题演讲都是匆匆来去，而大家都会留在会场。所以这种环境更亲密，你能学到更多东西，也有机会和更多人交流。彼得，他们在会议中组织了很多一对一的交流，以最大化个人之间的沟通。这真的很棒。无论如何，我非常感谢他们邀请我们参加，让我们在这里做这些事情。对于他们来说，这是一个巨大的投入。我认为，在硅谷以外的地方，大家有一种未被充分认识的看法，就是认为这一切都是零和博弈。也就是说，如果我赢了，你就输了。我们都很有竞争力，无论是打扑克、打篮球，还是参与这些活动，我们都喜欢赢。但实际上，我认为这正是一种正和博弈的体现。

The fact of the matter is we're all analysts. We're trying to figure out the future. And what I deeply appreciate, you know, with you, with the guys at all in, when you come to an event like this, it's a lot of conversation about this future, about the consequence on the economy. We're going to be talking to Larry Summers tonight about, you know, about that question, about the consequence on society from AI, which we're going to be talking about a little bit today. You know, but when you really telescope out over the last 20 years that you and I've been doing this, technology is going from 5% to 15% of global GDP. Right. And we're going to talk about public markets and venture markets. But the reality is there's a very big pie, you know, and we can all participate in that together.

其实，我们都是分析师，都在努力预测未来。我非常欣赏你们，在像这样的活动中，大家会一起讨论未来及其对经济的影响。今晚我们将与拉里·萨默斯讨论AI对社会的影响，我们今天也会稍微谈到这个话题。回顾过去二十年，你我一直在从事这项工作，技术在全球GDP中的占比从5%增长到了15%。我们还会聊到公共市场和风险市场。但实际上，这个蛋糕非常大，我们都可以一起参与其中。

And so, you know, to me, this is a reflection. I see a lot of old friends, you know, this place is full of GPs, it's full of venture capitalists. You know, a lot of people would think of altimeters as a competitor to co-to. Right. But the fact of the matter is you and I collaborate with them on a ton of stuff. Yeah. Some of it works, some of it doesn't work, but we trust each other. We have a shorthand with one another. So it's great to be back down here. And like I said, thanks to, you know, Philippe and Thomas for encouraging us to do the pod down here. I think it's a perfect setting. But, you know, I thought one of the things we could do is set up for people like what goes on here. And just kind of take them through it a little bit, right?

对我来说，这是一个反思的时刻。我看到许多老朋友，这个地方充满了普通合伙人和风险投资家。很多人可能会认为Altimeters是Co-to的竞争对手。然而事实是你我与他们在许多项目上进行了合作。有些成功了，有些则没有，但我们彼此信任，交流也很顺畅。所以，很高兴能回到这里。正如我所说的，感谢Philippe和Thomas鼓励我们在这里录制这个播客。我认为这是一个完美的环境。此外，我觉得我们可以为大家介绍一下这里发生的事情，并帮他们了解其中的一些细节，对吧？

So as you said, there's a couple hundred founders, CEOs and GPs. You know, the first morning, which was this morning, we always telescope out. And Philippe kind of takes us through, you know, the view of the public markets, if you will. And then Thomas takes us through this view of the venture markets. And so maybe we could just start. And just giving us sense like, I mean, it's a presentation I look forward to every year. And I think they said they threw out a hundred slides. Right. So they put, they didn't, it's not fall off a log. They're putting in an immense amount of work to put this together. And by the time this podcast is released, I believe their PowerPoints will be released.

正如你说的，这里有几百位创始人、CEO和GP。今天早上，也就是活动的第一天早晨，我们通常会先进行总体的概览。Philippe带我们了解了公共市场的情况，而Thomas则介绍了创业市场的情况。也许我们可以从这里开始。每年我都很期待这场演讲，他们说今年准备了一百多张幻灯片。可以看出，他们投入了大量的精力来制作这些内容，并非轻而易举。在这个播客发布的时候，我相信他们的PPT也会发布。

Yeah. So perhaps people can follow along as we talk about what happened. You know, they captured a little of that zeitgeist. Remember the old meeker slides? Yeah. You know, that everybody, you know, waited to see Mary slides. Yeah, I know. And I think they do a lot of really great content. Yeah. And Daniel sent also, you know, they gave thanks to him and his team for putting these things together. So a lot of great content.

好的。那么在我们讨论事件发展的时候，或许人们可以跟着一起了解。他们真的捕捉到了当时的时代精神。还记得以前Meeker的那些幻灯片吗？是的，大家都期待看到Mary的幻灯片。是的，我知道，他们确实制作了很多非常优秀的内容。而且，Daniel他们也感谢了他和他的团队制作这些东西。因此，这真的是很多出色的内容。

But they started, you know, I always like to get a read on where they are both as, you know, where co-conspirators in the public markets. The public markets really set the stage for the venture markets. And he said, you know, his first slide, you know, he put up this slide. He said, two big questions in 2024. Number one, are we in an AI bubble in the public markets? And then number two, we talked about last week is software dead.

他们开始了，你知道，我一直喜欢了解一下他们的立场，就像是了解他们作为共谋者在公开市场中的位置。公开市场实际上为风险投资市场奠定了基础。他在他的第一张幻灯片上提出了两个主要问题：2024年有两个大问题。第一个是，我们在公开市场中是否处于一个人工智能泡沫中？第二个是，我们上周讨论过的话题，软件是否已经没有前景了。

Okay. And what was interesting is we do these live polls. So I don't know, there may be 150 seats out here. We do these live polls. They flashed up the poll we did this time last year. And this time last year, 56% of people here said we're in an AI bubble in the public markets. Remember, Nvidia had gone from $120 a share maybe at that time to $250 a share. And people are already saying we're in a bubble.

好的。有趣的是，我们进行现场投票。我不太确定这里有多少座位，大概有150个吧。我们做这些现场投票时，还展示了去年此时我们做的调查结果。当时，有56%的人认为我们正处于公共市场的AI泡沫中。记得那时候英伟达的股价从每股120美元涨到了250美元。人们已经在说我们身处泡沫中了。

Now since then, Nvidia is up 200%. Okay. And I was watching CNBC this morning. So far this year, Nvidia is responsible for 5% of the S&P 500 returns. The other mags six are responsible for 5%. And then the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 are responsible for 4% of the 14% year-to-date returns. If you looked at the S&P equal weighted, okay. So you just everybody's in at the same amount. It's only up 4% this year.

自那时以来，英伟达上涨了200%。好的。我今天早上看了CNBC。今年到目前为止，英伟达为标普500指数的回报贡献了5%。其他六大科技公司贡献了5%。而标普500指数中的其他493家公司则贡献了14%年初至今回报中的4%。如果按标普等权重计算，就是说每家公司权重相同，今年只上涨了4%。

So that all led, I think, Philippe to say, you know, we've got $3 trillion companies now. Is this sustainable? Are we in a bubble? What was surprising to me was knowing Philippe the way we do is he showed a slide of the earnings growth of Nvidia, right? Comparing it to Cisco from the 99 2000 period. In the case of Cisco, the earnings multiple more than tripled during that period of time.

这就引导菲利普说：“你看，我们现在有三家市值达到3万亿美元的公司。这种情况可持续吗？我们是在泡沫中吗？”让我感到惊讶的是，了解菲利普如我们所知，他展示了一张关于英伟达(Nvidia)盈利增长的幻灯片，并将其与1999至2000年期间的思科(Cisco)进行比较。在思科的情况下，其市盈率在那个时期增长了三倍多。

But in this case, because of the earnings growth of Nvidia, the earnings multiple has been flat despite the fact that the stock is up nearly 10x. So he seemed to suggest bill that we're not in an AI bubble. In fact, he showed an S curve saying, co-tos view is that it's going to be even bigger than people currently think. Was that convincing to you? Because I know you've been a voice of pragmatism.

在这种情况下，由于英伟达收益的增长，尽管股票涨了近10倍，市盈率却保持平稳。因此，他似乎在向比尔暗示我们并没有处于人工智能泡沫中。事实上，他展示了一条S形曲线，表示科托的观点是，这个领域的前景比目前人们想象的还要大。这对你有说服力吗？因为我知道你一直是务实派的声音。

He had to. Certainly at the end of his presentation, it was hard not to believe. I felt a little bit like I was at church. He went on to say I believe that, and I think they were somewhat liberal in tagging AI companies with this set of AI companies were responsible for 90% of the gains in the public markets. I think they're including some energy stocks that have traded up as a result of this but yeah, he pointed out that if you go to the past and start to notice one to three companies just materially blowing out numbers above everyone's estimates over several quarters.

他不得不这么做。在他演讲的结尾，不相信都很难。我感觉有点像是在教堂里。他继续说，我相信这一点，并且我认为他们在把一些公司贴上人工智能公司的标签时有点随意，这些公司声称对股市的90%涨幅负责。我觉得他们可能把一些因为这个趋势而上涨的能源类股票也算进去了。不过，他指出，如果你回顾过去，会注意到一到三家公司在几个季度内持续远超人们的预期。

There may be something happening that you should pay attention to. Which is a valid argument, right? And listen, I love the self-deprecating nature. He says in 2022, right, it was all about macro. What's happening with inflation? What's happening with interest rates, right? Macro dominated 2022. We get Chad GPT at the end of 22, okay? We enter 2023.

可能有些事情正在发生，你应该关注一下。这是一个合理的观点，对吧？听我说，我很喜欢这种自嘲的风格。他说，2022年的重点全是宏观经济。通货膨胀情况如何？利率又如何？宏观问题主导了2022年。然后在2022年底，我们迎来了Chad GPT。接着我们进入了2023年。

And so you have this post-traumatic stress and he's saying that post-traumatic stress kept a lot of people out of the market despite all of our suspicion that this was an important phase shift. 23, you have this lift off and what has happened is as more cards got turned over, by the end of the presentation, he said macro is shifted to the back seat, right? That now he's kind of in the camp.

因此，你体验到了这种创伤后压力，而他说这种创伤后压力让很多人无法进入市场，尽管我们一直怀疑这是一个重要的阶段转换。23年，你看到了市场起飞，事情的发展是，随着更多的牌被揭开，到演讲结束时，他说宏观因素已经退居次要地位。换句话说，他现在大致同意这种看法。

Which I found a huge relief because you know, I don't like to. Um, so you know, macro shifted to the back seat, you know, from his perspective that we're kind of headed toward. There's no landing, soft landing, you know, that maybe inflation really was an anomaly of the COVID period. And if that's the case, then, you know, this new super cycle, um, which, you know, again, they described as transforming all these different parts of society, you know, uh, is allowed to shine.

这让我感到非常宽慰，因为你知道，我不太喜欢这类情况。所以，你知道，从他的角度来看，宏观经济的关注已经退居次席，因为我们可能正走向一种“没有着陆”或“软着陆”的局面。也许通货膨胀真的只是新冠疫情时期的一个异常现象。如果真是这样，那么这一新的超级周期，就可以展现其影响力，他们描述这个周期将会改变社会的各个方面。

And so that to me was a significant change, I think by co-t2 in terms of the positioning of those two. I'd add one thing to it just from dinner last night, you know, I get to see people that I may only see once or twice a year that might be executives at some of the Mag 7 or other VCs at other firms.

对我来说，这是一个重大变化，我认为在co-t2中对这两者的定位发生了变化。我想补充一点，就是昨晚的晚餐让我有机会见到一些我可能一年只能见一两次的人，他们可能是Mag 7中的高管，或者是其他公司的风险投资家。

And one thing that was congruent across them all is they all feel a bit like a kid in a candy store with AI. It's like there's a new toy to go play with. And I think from an intellectual curiosity standpoint, like I see smiles and excitement and like, so it's clear to me that the vast majority of people here, not just, not just the team of co-2, believes this is a mega wave that is, it's kind of where everyone's got to be all in on. Yeah. That is, I mean, I think if there's one surprise, you know, one answer on that, I'll, you know, I'd love to get your reaction to.

他们都有一个共同的感觉，就是面对人工智能时，就像小孩进了糖果店一样。就好像有了一个新玩具可以玩。我觉得从智力好奇心的角度来看，我看到大家都充满了微笑和兴奋，所以我很清楚，这里绝大多数人，不仅仅是co-2团队，都相信这是一个必须全力以赴的超级浪潮。我想知道你对此有什么看法。

So on the question of how much would it, you know, and I hear this 200 billion of CapEx going into the ground this year, how much return do companies need to see? So we had such a present to us one answer. We had fleet give us another answer today. Fleet what he called his monkey math was that it was going to take $1.8 trillion in order to provide a 25% return on investing capital. Okay. And of that 1.8 trillion, he went and said, if we got a 5% improvement in the labor force, right?

关于这个问题，就是说，今年大约2000亿美元的资本支出投入到基础设施建设中，公司需要看到多少回报呢？我们今天收到了一个答案，还有一个被称作“车队”的人给了我们另一个答案。车队用他所谓的“粗略计算”表示，需要1.8万亿美元才能获得25%的投资回报率。其中，他提到如果能在劳动力方面提高5%的效率，情况会是怎样。

So you, I think what he was saying is we effectively take 5% out of the labor force that that would be enough cost savings to justify the 200 billion dollar investment. I should have tackled it from a slightly different way, you know, just here talking at lunch. He said, if we currently have a global GDP growing at 1 to 2%, he said, if we could get that up to 3 to 4%, the incremental gain, you know, coming from that would be enough to compensate again for this because it would more than double the amount of money spent on technology.

所以，我认为他的意思是，我们实际上从劳动力中减少5%，这样就能节省足够的成本来证明这2000亿美元的投资是值得的。当时我应该从另一个角度来分析这个问题，只是在午餐时谈论这个问题的时候，他说，目前全球GDP增长率为1%到2%，如果我们能把这个数字提高到3%到4%，那么由此带来的额外收益将足以再次弥补这笔投资，因为这会使用于技术上的投资金额增加超过一倍。

Convincing or not convincing seems like it answers the question. The saw to him, I buy more than the, than the first one. The problem I have with the first one is simply that, you know, my entire time in technology, like these tools are competitive weapons, but if I get armed with them and my competitor gets armed with them, it doesn't necessarily increase. It doesn't create like free net income. You might die if you don't do it, but you got to keep, it's the red queen effect. You got to keep running just to keep up.

看起来“有说服力”或“没有说服力”似乎可以回答问题。对于他来说，我更愿意购买这个，而不是第一个。我对第一个不满意的地方在于，在我从事技术行业的整个过程中，这类工具更像是竞争的武器。如果我和竞争对手都拥有这些工具，这并不会真正带来额外的收益。如果你不使用它们，你可能会被淘汰。但即便如此，你也必须要持续前进，这就是红皇后效应：为了保持原地不动，你得拼命奔跑。

Yes. So capitalism ultimately competes away margins. Yeah. Down at the level of life. You get to benefit humans. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I buy the GDP argument better. Right. Right. But anyway, look, the other thing that I would say that reinforces the super cycle is, now that all the VCs are convinced and all the big tech companies are convinced, they're all plowing money into LLM research. Now LLM might not be the best tool for every problem, but we're going to find out, we're sure going to find out all edge cases possible.

好的。资本主义最终会压缩利润空间，从而在生活层面上帮助到人类。这就是为什么我更倾向于相信GDP论点。然而，有件事我认为会强化这个超级周期，那就是现在所有的风险投资公司和大型科技公司都相信这一点，他们正大力投资于LLM（大型语言模型）研究。虽然LLM可能不是解决每个问题的最佳工具，但我们一定会发现其所有可能的极端应用场景。

Yeah. Because they're going to stack stuff on top of it, they're going to prop it up. We're going to go try. I should include the CIOs. I think all the CIOs are doing this. One thing he did mention was software stocks are down and I do think that this wave is being promoted at such a level that it sucks air from other things. Yes, for sure. At the CIO level, at the purchasing level, even at just the attention of the buy side level.

好的。因为他们会在上面堆放东西，还会支撑起来。我们会去尝试的。我应该把首席信息官（CIO）们也算进去。我认为所有的CIO都在这样做。他提到的一件事是，软件类股票的价格下跌，而我认为这个趋势的推广力度如此之大，以至于其他领域都受到影响。是的，的确如此。在CIO层面、采购层面，甚至仅仅在买方关注度层面都是如此。

Yes, I think it's important to point out that I think both Philippe and Sasha believe, Sasha even talked about it. He said, we have to prepare the company that there's going to be a mismatch in timing here between investment and return. These are non-linear events. And just like we saw on the internet, you may go like this, draw down 30% on your way to a higher high. But I think from an investment perspective, whether you're a venture capitalist or whether you're a public market investor or whether you're a founder, one of the founders in the audience, you have to assume that there is going to be an AI winter at some point in time.

是的，我认为有必要指出，我认为菲利普和萨莎都相信这一点，萨莎甚至还谈论过。他说，我们必须为公司做好准备，因为在投资与回报之间的时机上会有不匹配的情况。这些都是非线性事件。就像我们在互联网行业看到的那样，可能会经历类似情况，虽然过程中可能会下降30%，但最终会迎来更高的高峰。不过，从投资的角度来看，无论你是风险投资家，还是公共市场投资者，或者是现场的创始人之一，你都必须假定AI行业在某个时候会经历“冬天”（即停滞期）。

That zone of disillusionment you and I have talked about before, that doesn't mean that it's not going to be bigger than we all think. But it does mean that resilience through that period is going to be really important. If you run out of money during that period, it's all over. Yeah. He made, Sasha made me think of something that I hadn't really considered before. But because all AI tools are being delivered as a service in the cloud, there's just a massive amount of cat-x happening.

我们之前谈论过的失望期，并不意味着事情不会比我们想象的更大。但这确实意味着在这个时期保持韧性非常重要。如果你在这段时间没钱了，那就完了。是的，Sasha让我想到了一个我之前没有真正考虑过的问题。因为所有的人工智能工具都是通过云服务提供的，所以正在发生大量的资本支出。

And if you go back to the internet wave, people were buying Cisco products, maybe World Com was putting cat-x into the ground. Aquinix was putting cat-x into the ground. But it wasn't like Microsoft or that scape or whoever, they weren't really plowing this into the ground. And I think the risk of the type of things that could happen with a reset are higher when you're putting all this into the ground. And so, I should very quickly say this is a supply-driven wave.

如果回顾互联网浪潮，人们购买了思科的产品，也许WorldCom和Aquinix公司正在铺设网线。然而，这并不像微软或其他公司，他们并没有真正将这些投入到基础设施建设中。而我认为，当你将所有这些投入到基础设施建设中时，重置可能带来的风险会更高。因此，我要很快说明，这是一场由供应推动的浪潮。

And I think up to date, that is true. We're building ahead of the plan. A lot of the startups and CIOs qualify the current AI work as experimental. Not all of it. The coding stuff. We've been through this. A lot of it is real. But some of it is steer experimental. So if there were any hesitance here, whatever, or if we build too much cat-backs or whatever, it could be, there could be cost. Back to the GDP thing. I thought it was really interesting. Such a thing about how a global company had to do, simply had to do their annual planning, pre-personal computer, pre-spread sheet, pre-internet. And it's no wonder that massive productivity was unleashed in the 80s and 90s. I mean, the productivity gains in the 90s were so great that the US government ran a surplus if you remember at the end of the 90s.

我认为，到目前为止，这是事实。我们的建设进度超前。许多初创公司和首席信息官将当前的人工智能工作视为实验性的，但并不是全部如此。特别是一些编码方面的工作我们已经讨论过，其中很多是真实的。但确实有一部分是纯实验性的。因此，如果这里有任何的犹豫，或者我们建设过多的资本开支，可能会带来成本问题。回到GDP这个话题，我觉得很有趣。想想过去一家跨国公司在没有个人电脑、电子表格和互联网的年代是如何进行年度规划的，因此在80年代和90年代生产力得到了极大的释放也就不足为奇了。90年代的生产力增长如此之大，导致美国政府在90年代末时还有盈余，如果你还记得的话。

Oh, I remember because it lasted about 10 seconds. Well, also because Clinton cut taxes in front of a. And the market was up 30%. Sure, sure. But the productivity gains to come out of that are undeniable. And I think there's reason to believe that the productivity gains we're going to see here are at least as big. I think that's what these folks who are making these investments believe. But it was interesting that such as, here we are, I'm a software business, and I'm investing more in cat-backs than industrial companies. And he spent a lot of time talking about what it meant to be a lean operator when you're investing at that level of cat-backs. 50 billion a year, I think. Right.

哦，我记得，因为那段时间持续了大约10秒钟。我还记得是因为克林顿当时在某个场合减税，并且市场上涨了30%。当然，但随之而来的生产力提升是不可否认的。我认为有理由相信我们将看到的生产力提升至少同样大。我认为，那些正在进行投资的人也相信这一点。但有趣的是，就像这样，我是一家软件公司，我在资本支出上的投资比一些工业公司还多。他花了很多时间讨论在这种高水平资本支出投资时，怎样才能成为一个精益运营商。每年大约500亿美元，对吧。

Yeah, that's a lot. I think that Fleeke said that it really caught my eye. Maybe he was trying to be provocative, but he implied, do you tell me if I got this wrong? He implied that in the modern era, you need to be $10 billion to go public. Yeah. Market cap. Yes. Which, if it's 10 billion or bus, that's a bitch, man. Well, so let's dig into that. I mean, you know, we went through the public market stuff. I think the punchline at the end of it was the markets up a lot in 23 and 24. You know, we haven't, multiples have not expanded that much, but it does assume that revenue continues to grow. Right. He said, Nvidia is not expensive on an earnings basis.

是的，那真是很多。我认为Fleeke所说的确实引起了我的注意。也许他想要引起轰动，但他的暗示是，如果我理解有误，请指正。他暗示在现代时代，企业需要达到100亿美元的市值才能上市。是的，市值。如果是10亿美元或更少，那可真是个难题。那么，让我们深入探讨一下这个问题。我们经过了公开市场的一些情况。我认为最终的结论是，市场在2023年和2024年上涨了很多。尽管市盈率并没有大幅扩张，但这确实假设了收入会继续增长。他说，从收益的角度来看，英伟达并不昂贵。

So if it's going to miss, it's because either revenue growth is going to stop or margins collapse and price. And the second, you know, it seemed to be that they were, we suggested last week, the smart money was beginning to nibble on software. The software is not dead. You know, he seemed to suggest it's just the last thing to benefit from AI. And so I've talked to a bunch of folks here. And I would say the number one thing that I hear people buying are not the semis stocks that have worked so well over the course of last year. But everybody's interested in buying software at five and a half times revenue, forward revenue, which is, as we've said, 20% below the 10-year average, they may be early, but I think people are really interested.

所以，如果会出现问题，那可能是因为收入增长停止了，或者利润率崩溃和价格下跌。第二点，你知道的，我们上周提到，聪明的资金开始逐步买入软件。软件行业并没有消亡，他似乎暗示这只是受益于人工智能的最后一个部分而已。我和这边的一些人聊过，据我了解，大家现在买得最多的不是去年表现出色的半导体股票，而是那些价格相当于五年半收入的未来收益的软件。这相对于过去十年的平均水平低了20%，可能有些人入场过早，但我认为大家对此非常感兴趣。

They don't think software is dead. And they think that software starts to look interesting. I think there's a, we'd have to dig in later, but I think there are certain types of software companies that people think are more under threat from LLM's, more workflow than who's the data repository. There's questions about whether LLM's replace queries and who sits in the stack where and so there are some people that still take, you know, I view the width of what people are willing to believe about AI is really wide. And the skeptics are like LLM's are topping out, but the people on the opposite end are like, oh, this is just going to replace all the software I have. Right.

他们不认为软件已死。他们认为软件开始变得有趣。我觉得我们以后需要更深入地研究，但我认为有些类型的软件公司被认为更容易受到大型语言模型（LLM）的威胁，尤其是工作流类的公司，而不是数据存储类的公司。对于LLM是否会替代查询以及在技术堆栈中的位置存在一些疑问。因此，有些人仍然持有不同观点。我认为人们对人工智能的可能性理解范围很广，而持怀疑态度的人认为LLM的能力已经触顶，但持相反意见的人则觉得，哦，这将会替代我所有的软件。

And the truth is probably in the middle. I think it's probably. And like as analysts, our job is to figure out, you know, you know, exactly where that is. So you started to reference, you know, after we did the deep dive this morning on public markets, then we talked about venture markets. You know, Thomas took us through that and you know, I'll lead up to the conversation on IPOs, which I think is really interesting. We've talked a lot, but he basically started by saying VC is normalizing. You know, if you look at 2021, he showed a slide. We had 715 billion of venture that went into the ground in 2021.

真相可能在中间。我认为这很可能。作为分析师，我们的工作就是找出确切的位置。所以，你提到在我们今天早上深入分析公共市场之后，我们又谈论了风险投资市场。托马斯带领我们了解了这一点，我接下来会引导关于IPO的讨论，我认为这非常有趣。我们谈了很多，但他基本上是以风险投资正在正常化为开场白。如果你看看2021年，他展示了一张幻灯片，显示那一年有7150亿美元的风险投资流入市场。

We've talked a fair bit about that. This year, they're forecasting about 250 billion into the ground in the venture. It's about one third of the levels we were in 2024. However, I think venture as they measure, it has become to mean non PE private investment. Correct. Correct. I think it's all technology investing. That's not public and it's not private equity. And then they looked at the coldest sack of AI year to date. I think 200 deals, 22 billion of investment, average valuation. One wait for it, one billion dollars, average round size, 120 million. The round size in the valuation were 5 to 6x, the non AI company.

我们已经讨论了不少关于这个话题。今年，他们预测在这项风险投资中的投入约为2500亿美元，这大约是我们2024年水平的三分之一。然而，我认为他们所衡量的“风险投资”已经演变为非股权投资的私人投资。没错，我认为这全都是技术类的投资，不属于公开市场投资也不属于私人股权投资。他们还观察了今年迄今为止关于人工智能的投资情况。据了解，大约有200笔交易，总投资额为220亿美元，平均估值达到了，等一下，一亿美元，平均融资规模为1.2亿美元。这个轮次的融资规模和估值是非AI公司的5到6倍。

Correct. 5 to 6. Correct. That was, I thought, well, it was so interesting about the way they teed up the presentation on venture. Right. He then took us through almost a bit of admonishment for some or at least encouragement, strong encouragement for the founders in the crowd that may have raised money between 2020 and 2022. He took, here's a slide where he said, you know, outside of the AI unicorns, the other 1400 unicorns are not raising any money, right? And he said, there's too many competing opportunities in the public market, risk-free rate of 5%. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin said we still have too many unicorns at 1400. He showed a slide of the linked in employee growth within those 1400 unicorns has gone from 75% to 10%. And the revenue growth has also decelerated dramatically.

好的，把这段翻译成中文，并尽量让它易读：正确。5到6。对，我觉得，他们把风险投资的演示安排得非常有趣。他接着给我们稍微训诫了一下，或者至少是对在2020到2022年间筹集资金的创始人给予了强烈的鼓励。他展示了一张幻灯片，上面说，除了人工智能独角兽之外，其他1400个独角兽都没有在筹集资金。他还提到，公共市场有太多竞争机会，比如无风险利率达到5％，还有比特币。比特币。他说拥有1400个独角兽仍然太多。他展示了一张幻灯片，显示这些1400个独角兽的LinkedIn员工增长率从75%下降到了10%，而其收入增长也显著放缓。

Now you and I've been talking about this. No, no left axis on that one, but you're down into the right fate. And shockingly, IPOs in 2024, 2021 through 2024 are fewer than during the great financial crisis in 2008. No IPOs 1400 private unicorns, most of which have not had a funding round since the majority of which he and he has a slide on that have not had a funding round since this quote reset in 2023. And so maybe hasn't haven't faced the taking their medicine as to what their real valuation is. And then he showed a slide that where they, I don't know how they, I do, maybe it was in their own portfolio, but where secondaries are happening and they're happening at the exact same multiple as the public companies.

现在你和我一直在讨论这个问题。没有哪个地方的左轴是这样的，但你正走向命运的低谷。令人震惊的是，从2021年到2024年的IPO数量，比2008年金融危机期间还要少。没有IPO，有1400家私人创业公司，其中大部分自2023年所谓的“重置”以来都没有进行过融资。这意味着他们可能还没有面对实际估值的现实。然后，他展示了一张幻灯片，上面显示了不知怎么的（也许是在他们自己的投资组合中），但发生的二级市场交易与公开公司的市盈率完全相同。

And so just to just to put it, the secondary sales in the vendor market are 50 to 75% off. The high is just like the public markets retracing it. The non-MAX 7 companies that are public. Correct. And so I do think, I often hear people on a board say something like, well, good thing we, we didn't go public or good thing we aren't public. But they're sitting on the board of a private company that's at 150 million in revenue and growing 10%. Right. Right. You just have your head in the hole in the ground like an ostrich. You're not better off. The only one reason you might be better off, you might be able to persuade your employees that things aren't as bad. Whereas if you're public, you're looking at a $4 stock. I could actually say Bill that you're worse off.

为了更好地解释这个问题，可以这样翻译：在供应商市场，二级销售的折扣为50%到75%。这种高降幅就像公开市场的回撤。非MAX 7的上市公司也是一样。我经常听到董事会上有人说，幸好我们没上市或者幸好我们不是上市公司。但他们却是营收1.5亿美元并以10%增长的私人公司董事。就像鸵鸟把头埋在地里一样，他们并没有更好的处境。唯一的好处可能是他们可以让员工觉得情况没那么糟，而如果是上市公司，股票价格可能只有4美元。实际上，比尔，我甚至可以说你的情况更糟。

And here's the argument. I agree with that point. I mean, when the public markets gives you a sign, right? Like it did meta or Facebook in the fall of 2022 and the stock goes to $90 a share. Right. There's no one, there's no one to hide. You confront the brutal truth. You confront the reality. Public market investors, you know, it's the collective wisdom of that crowd. And I think it motivates the company to do the things they should do and they do them faster than they would otherwise do. And Zuckerberg led the charge on this and his stock is quintupled since that point. I could not agree more. And so I just see, I see, you know, the irony there is you have a company that went from 86,000 employees to 69,000 employees at a faster rate than I've watched most of these private unicorns move.

这是我的观点。我同意这一点。就是说，当公开市场给你一个信号时，比如2022年秋天对Meta或Facebook的股价影响，跌到每股90美元时，没有地方可以躲藏。你必须面对残酷的现实。这时候，公开市场的投资者，就像一个群体的集体智慧，我觉得这能激励公司采取应有的措施，而且推行的速度比平时更快。而扎克伯格在这方面起到了带头作用，自那以后，他们的股价已经翻了五倍。我完全同意。而讽刺的是，这家公司员工人数从86,000人减到69,000人的速度，比我看到的大多数私营独角兽公司行动得还要快。

You know, the private unicorns hid in the cocoon of the fact that they didn't have to get marked daily. And that's why I would, you know, I really don't like the stay private forever idea. It works for some companies where you have an Elon Musk running SpaceX and you know the intrinsic motivation and experience will lead to a good outcome. It doesn't work well for 30, 150 bless you of the other unicorns that are out there. Yeah. And to play devil's advocate, I think some people are going to make the argument that you don't want to be a micro cap public company and that no one will pay attention to you and no one will cover you.

你知道，那些未公开上市的独角兽公司隐藏在“无需每日估值”的保护罩中。这就是为什么我其实不太喜欢“永远保持私有化”的理念。对于某些公司来说，比如由埃隆·马斯克领导的SpaceX，这种模式是可行的，因为他们凭借内在动力和经验会有好的结果。但对于其他30到150家独角兽公司来说，这并不是一个好的选择。同时，从另一个角度来看，有人可能会认为你不想成为一个小型市值的上市公司，因为这样可能不会引起人们的关注，也不会有媒体报道你。

Yeah. I still say like if you're liquid, you know, that's better off. You've converted away your lick press stack. That's better off. You want to tell you why I don't believe that. Yeah. Yeah. Because investors are greedy. Right. Right. Greedy investors will find you if your company is growing really fast in his great margins. Yeah. Look at Sam Sara. I'm sorry. I went public and everybody said too small, not enough coverage, stocks not working. That company has been a grand slam home run in the public markets. Okay. The fact of the matter is if you're only growing 10% and you're marginally profitable or not profitable, I don't care if you're in the venture markets or you're in the public markets, you got to fix your business model because that's never going to fetch a big multiple.

好的。我的观点是，如果你的资产是流动的，那会更好。你已经转换掉那些难以变现的资产，这是明智的选择。你想知道为什么我不认同另一种观点吗？因为投资者都是贪婪的。如果你的公司增长迅速并且利润率高，这样的公司总会吸引贪婪的投资者。看看Sam Sara公司，他们上市时，大家都说规模太小，关注度不够，股票表现不好。然而，该公司在公开市场上取得了惊人的成功。事实上，如果你的公司增长只有10%，利润微薄甚至不盈利，无论是在风险投资市场还是公共市场，你都需要改进你的商业模式，因为这样是无法获得高市盈率的。

But let's get to the question on the table. IPOs. Okay. So what to do about it? What to do about it? You know, and I think there's this question that we've debated amongst ourselves with our friends with Thomas and Philippe about how big you need to be. I think he was speaking at a conference in New York and he reiterated it. Here, he thought you needed to be $10 billion. Okay. In total market cap in order to go public. Okay. You've been at this for 25 years. Yeah. Tell me. Tell us your response to this question of whether or not. Does that implies if you're a software company, you need to have like a billion in revenue to go public. Do you think that's true? Well, I don't, but let me tell you, let me take a quick aside and let's say that is true. If you have to be at a billion in revenue, anger, growing, like if you want to 10x multiple, you have to be growing 30%, 35% and if that, if every company is going to raise 500 million to a billion dollars, and if that's the only way they succeed, if they get to that level, this game just got a lot harder.

让我们来谈谈桌面上的问题：IPO（首次公开募股）。那么，我们应该怎么做呢？你知道，我们一直在和自己、朋友，以及Thomas和Philippe讨论一个问题，就是公司究竟要多大才能上市。我记得他在纽约的一个会议上再次提到，他认为公司总市值需要达到100亿美元才能上市。如果是这样，那软件公司是否需要收入达到10亿美元才能公开上市呢？你怎么看？我个人并不这么认为，但让我稍微岔开一下话题，假设这是真的。如果企业的收入必须达到10亿美元，并且想要获得10倍市盈率，就需要以30%到35%的速度增长。而且如果每家公司都需要筹集5亿到10亿美元，并且只有到达那个水平才能成功，那么这个游戏就变得更加艰难了。

This is massive risk on, and I even wonder if part of the reason that you have this 1,400 sitting there is we forced so much capital on these companies that they had to grow up so fast and they had to do things that weren't kind of the normal way that you would grow a company. Where you stay close to the unit economics and you learn as you go, if you have to just be all on, and we talked about it last week, there's four companies in the coding AI space that raised over 400 million each. You think there'll be another round behind that? They're all going to pull out the huge guns and point them at one another and you're going to execute in a way that's more risk on. So if that's the new world order, it's a form of capital competition and gamesmanship that is much different from classic venture capital. I hope it's not true, but if it is, this is a different game.

这是一个巨大的风险，我甚至怀疑你看到有1400家企业在那里的部分原因是因为我们向这些公司注入了太多资本，以至于它们不得不快速成长，并且不得不采用一些不是公司正常成长方式的方法。通常情况下，公司会紧贴单位经济效益，边学边发展，但如果必须全力以赴，就像我们上周讨论的那样，有四家公司在编码人工智能领域各自筹集了超过四亿美元的资金。你认为还会有新一轮融资吗？这些公司都将全力以赴地相互竞争，并且你会看到它们以更加冒险的方式来执行。如果这是新的世界秩序，这种资本竞争和策略的形式将与传统风险投资有很大不同。我希望这不是真的，但如果是，那这就是一个不一样的游戏。

Yeah, I mean, listen, heavyweight fighting. I think it's a good provocation. Thomas presented other paths to liquidity, M&A, PE partnerships, he put up on the screen, but here's what I see. We've recently sold two companies in our portfolio. One was reported by the Wall Street Journal for a billion to two billion dollars to Databrace called Tabular. We have companies that have gotten fit and that are re-accelerating their growth rates. We have two companies in the IPO pipeline. I just think this has taken longer than any of us think. Out of that 1,400, I suspect that 60 to 70% of those companies are never going to go public. These are companies that are either going to have to get sold off. They pass the peak in terms of their growth rates. They don't have enough revenue scale in order to get public, but I think that they're going to be 30 to 40% of those that certainly could get public.

我觉得吧，这就像重量级的较量。我认为这是个不错的挑衅。Thomas展示了其他实现资金流动的途径，比如并购和私募合作等，他在屏幕上展示了这些。不过这是我看到的情况。我们最近出售了投资组合中的两家公司，其中一家名为Tabular的公司被《华尔街日报》报道以十亿到二十亿美元的价格卖给了Databrace。我们的公司在变得更加强健，并且再次加速增长。我们有两家公司准备上市。我只是觉得这花的时间比我们任何人预想的都要长。在那1,400家公司中，我猜测有60%到70%的公司永远都无法上市。这些公司要么被出售，要么已经过了增长的顶峰期，无法产生足够的收入规模来上市，但我认为有30%到40%的公司是有可能上市的。

They may have to accept like Instacart did. By the way, look at Instacart. They accepted a big downed round from their last private round. They went public. The stock traded downed, didn't trade that well. I think the stock is up well over 50% now because they've executed in the public markets. I can't reinforce enough. Amazon since they went public, I think they've had four periods where they were down over 60%. I understand. I mentioned from the previous wave, Equinix went from 200 down to 2. And today is at $778 and $80 billion market cap. So it can happen. I thought we would see way more IPOs. I thought people would come public to kind of close their capital and wipe out the Lyc prep. But we still will. I would encourage the regulators to do anything they can to make sure we don't have a systematic problem that's causing being public to be too expensive.

他们可能不得不接受像Instacart那样的情况。顺便说一下，看看Instacart。他们接受了一轮比上一轮私募融资估值更低的融资，并且成功上市。尽管上市后股价表现不好，但如今他们的股价已经上涨了超过50%，因为他们在公开市场上表现出色。我必须强调这一点。自从亚马逊上市以来，我想他们经历过四次股价下跌超过60%的时期。我懂得，比如前一波浪潮中的Equinix，他们的股价从200美元跌到了2美元，而如今的股价是778美元，市值达到800亿美元。所以这种情况是可能发生的。我原以为会看到更多的IPO，原以为人们会选择上市以弥补资本亏损，并消除优先股的压力。但我们仍将看到这种情况。我建议监管部门尽一切努力，确保上市成本不会因系统性问题而过高。

And I know that the reality we talked about on the last podcast, if that comes to be true or just way fewer companies go public and all the growth is in the private markets, that the Gensler types are going to come out and say that's bad for the retail investor and they're going to want to fix it. I hope the way they try and fix it is to look through the cost of being public, all the cost of being public and say what can we do as regulators to improve that situation? That's where I hope. The second thing I would like to do on this podcast, assuming that we have some really good set of listeners out there. If there is a banker out there that thinks like the Four Horsemen did who says, I don't need you to be 10 billion to be public. I would love to take you public at 100 million in revenue. Come see me, call me. I will connect you to companies. I will promote you. We need someone willing to do that.

我知道在上次的播客中我们讨论的现实情况，如果真的发生，或者只有极少数公司上市并且所有的增长都发生在私营市场，那么像Gensler这样的人会站出来说这对散户投资者不利，他们会想要解决这个问题。我希望他们尝试解决的方式是审视公开上市的成本，所有上市的成本，并看看我们作为监管者能做些什么来改善这种情况。这是我所希望的。第二件我想在这个播客中做的事是，如果我们有一些很不错的听众群体。如果有像“四骑士”那样思考的银行家，他们会说，不需要你有100亿的市值才能上市。我愿意在你只有1亿美元收入时带你上市。来找我，给我打电话。我会帮你联系公司。我会为你宣传。我们需要愿意做这件事的人。

I get the sense that the three big guys, JP Morgan, Morgan and Goldman just aren't that interested. I do think some percentage of the 1400 should go public. I don't think that waiting is helping them at all. I'd love to help find the people that can be their stewards. Let me crystallize a question for you. I was rumored last week that OpenAI is run rating three and a half, four billion dollars in revenue, which is extraordinary. I think it's pretty evenly split between a consumer business and an enterprise business. I think that's even more. I have some potential data on that. On top of that, I think that that team right through the teeth of so much noise in the market has whisked incredible turbulence to execute the way they have. Faster than any other company I've ever seen, delivering great products in the market.

我感觉到三大巨头，摩根大通、摩根和高盛，并不是那么感兴趣。我确实认为1400家公司中有一部分应该上市。我不认为等待对他们有任何帮助。我很想帮助找到可以成为他们管理者的人。让我为你提出一个明确的问题。上周有传言说OpenAI的收入预期达到35亿到40亿美元，这很了不起。我认为这些收入在消费和企业业务之间分配得相对均匀。我对这方面有一些潜在的数据。除此之外，我认为他们团队在市场喧嚣中顶住了巨大的动荡，执行得非常出色。比我见过的任何公司都更快地推出了优秀的产品。

They have Greg Brockman in the basement, churning out product no matter what happens in that business. They have the big announcement at WWDC at Apple last week, which I think was another master class in deal making and brand building by Sam and team. Okay. So you got four billion in revenue. You're growing well over 100% in here. You marked it up a little bit. Three and a half billion. Whatever you want to call it, would you go public if you were, if you could do a conversion to a for-profit company, would you take OpenAI? There's a lot in that second part. By the way, just to fill in some of this, and I could be wrong by math, but I went into one of these credit card survey things and I looked at it, opening it and assuming that people don't pay for the AI with the credit card. So the credit card pool just represents. And I compared it to a company where I knew the revenue.

他们把Greg Brockman关在地下室，无论业务如何变化，他都在不断推出新产品。他们在上周的苹果全球开发者大会上有重大公告，我认为那又是一堂关于交易和品牌建设的精彩课程，由Sam和他的团队主导。好的，你现在有四十亿美元的收入，并且增长超过100%。你给它稍微涨了一点，达到三十五亿。不管你怎么称呼这个金额，如果你能转换成一个营利公司，你会选择公开上市OpenAI吗？关于这一点，还有很多可以讨论的。顺便说一下，为了填补一些信息，我可能在数学上错了，但我查阅了一个信用卡调查，我观察了一下，假设人们不是用信用卡来支付AI的费用。因此，信用卡池只是一个代表。我将其与一个我知道收入的公司进行了比较。

It would imply that there are about 2.1 of the three, four is the consumer business at $20 a pot. So two thirds, the consumer business put me in it and I love it. Well, there's one other thing that I could look at in the credit card data, at least for the cohorts that are old enough, the churns about 65% annually. So the only 35% retaining, which sacks it, hinted at on all end. And maybe the reason that I think Sam at one point said he didn't really see the $20 thing as his future. Right. But would I encourage him to go public? Well, they just hired a very reputable CFO. So maybe they're taking about it. The reason I think they would do it is if they, first of all, they're very good at self-promotion and they're very good at promoting the company. They're very good at enterprise sales.

这段文字可以翻译成中文，表达如下：这意味着三者中有大约2.1，其中四是消费者业务，每个售价为20美元。因此，三分之二的消费者业务让我参与其中，我非常喜欢它。还有另一件事，我可以查看信用卡数据，至少对于年龄较大的群体，年流失率约为65%。所以只有35%的客户留存，这一点在各种场合中都曾提到过。也许这就是为什么我认为Sam曾经说过，他并不真的把这个20美元的产品视为他的未来，对吧。但是，我会建议他公开上市吗？他们刚刚聘请了一位非常有声望的首席财务官，所以也许他们正在考虑这样做。我认为他们会这样做的原因是，首先，他们非常擅长自我宣传，非常擅长推广公司，而且他们在企业销售方面非常出色。

They've been staffed, but many, many others. And so if they thought they'd get a premium multiple and could get out there and have access to capital at a much cheaper price and liquidity for the employees, which are now having to arrange, I could see it. I fear that the current wisdom of the entrepreneurs to not do it. Right. And we have an opportunity to make a case for Sam and D'Sacha. And here's a bit of the case that I would make for him. Number one, I think this is, when you build AI, I think it's going to be about trust and safety. And I think being a public company, being exposed to public disclosures, the scrutiny of the SEC, all the things that come with that from public market investors, I think is a good thing for that business.

他们已经配备了员工，但还有很多其他情况。所以，如果他们认为可以获得高额的多重溢价，并能以更便宜的价格获得资本，以及为员工提供流动性，我理解这种想法。我担心企业家们可能会放弃这条路。我们有机会为Sam和D'Sacha提出一个有力的论点。首先，我认为在构建人工智能时，信任和安全性是关键。而成为一家公众公司，接受公众信息披露和美国证券交易委员会的审查，以及来自公开市场投资者的各种关注，对于这样的业务来说是一件好事。

I think it would force them to tighten everything up. No, I'm not talking today. But if I were on that board, you know, and maybe we'll tell this to Larry tonight, I would say, you know, let's start moving the company in a direction as though we were public. Right. Let's do the conversion to a for-profit business. Enough of this. Funky. I don't think that's trivial. Funky. I agree. I'm just telling you, like it's doable. And the second thing I would say, I think it's only doable by putting a significant chunk of the company in the knot. Yeah. Like a share base in the nonprofit, not this thing where they get it at the end. But you can't take public that structure.

我觉得这样会迫使他们把一切都理顺。我今天不是在提议具体行动。但是如果我是那个董事会的成员，可能我们今晚会告诉Larry，我会建议，把公司往公开上市的方向去运作。对吧。转换为营利性公司，够了，这种乱七八糟的做法。我并不认为这是小事。乱七八糟，我同意。我只是告诉你，这样做是可行的。其次，我要说，我认为唯一可行的方法是把公司中的一大部分放入一个非营利结构中。是的，像一个股票基础在非营利机构，而不是那种他们最后才得到的东西。但是你不能用这种结构公开上市。

So here's what I don't like. I don't like the idea that you could have a company that could theoretically go to a trillion dollars in enterprise value, could theoretically develop a GI and a retail investor never has a shot to invest in that company. That is something that's good for the structure of our markets. I think for I think it's better for the company. I think it's better for the markets. And frankly, I think it solves one of Microsoft's problems as well. And we've seen all of the corporate, you know, some of the chaos around this business. I actually think it would be good for Sam and Greg and Brad and team, right, to do that. Now, of course, you got to put it on a path. This probably takes a couple of years to get there. But I mean, to me, that is the iconic question. If four billion isn't enough, Bill, you know, with a $90 billion private market valuation, what is?

所以，这就是我不喜欢的地方。我不喜欢这样的想法：一个公司理论上可以达到一万亿美元的企业价值，理论上可以开发出通用人工智能（GI），但普通投资者却没有机会投资于这样的公司。我认为，对于市场结构来说，这种情况是有利的，这对公司和市场都有好处。坦率地说，我认为这也解决了微软的一些问题。而且我们也看到了围绕这一业务的一些混乱局面。我实际上认为这对Sam、Greg和Brad的团队来说是件好事。当然，你需要为此设定一个计划，可能需要几年时间才能实现。但对我来说，这是一个重要的问题。如果400亿还不够，Bill，就算有900亿美元的私人市场估值，那又怎样呢？

And I just don't think it's going to be looked on that well. If all the sudden, all the best companies in the world, right, are only available to the guy, to the folks at this conference and not available to. And they may want to do acquisitions and getting the cap chart in a more traditional state would make that easier, public or private. So maybe we'll see that happen. I do think that the thing that may help us unlock this IPO problem, if you will, is a couple of AI companies going out. Yeah. So, and maybe that will even make it easier on the others just so that we start to prime the pump a little bit. So I think you'll start to hear chatter on who are going to be the first, you know, AI first companies to go public. There's rumors out there about core weave. There's articles about cerebris. So it would be interesting to see, I think it would be very helpful for the ecosystem to get a couple of those under our belt.

我不认为这样的情况会被认为很好。突然之间，全球所有最好的公司都只对参加这个会议的人开放，而不是对其他人。如果他们想进行收购，把股权结构调整到一个更传统的状态会更容易，不管是上市公司还是私营公司。所以也许会看到这样的事情发生。我确实认为，可能帮助我们解决IPO问题的是几家AI公司上市。这样做甚至可能使其他公司上市变得更容易，从而为市场注入一些活力。我想你会听到有人在讨论谁会是首批上市的AI公司。有传言说是CoreWeave，还有关于Cerebras的报道。我认为这将是很有趣且对整个生态系统非常有帮助的一步。

Well, there's talk that, that, oh, Mr. LaFont himself, would you like to join us? I mean, just come on up here. Join us for a minute. We're live right now. For Leib, we're just first. Thank you. Yeah. This is, you know, one of our favorite, if not our favorite, you know, conference in the investing business. And what I said to start is you are positive, some, you have all your, you have the folks that most people would think of as your competitors, you know, you invite them here. You collaborate, you build partners. I'm thinking about changing my mind. Awesome.

好吧，有人在讨论，哦，拉方特先生，您愿意加入我们吗？我意思是，就上来这里吧，加入我们一会儿。我们现在正在直播。莱布，我们只是先开始。谢谢。是的，这是我们最喜欢的投资行业会议之一，甚至可能是我们最喜欢的。我起初说的是，您很积极，您把多数人认为是竞争对手的人邀请到这里。您进行合作，建立伙伴关系。我正在考虑改变我的看法。太棒了。

So we were just talking about the $10 billion to IPO, right, which implies something around a billion dollars in revenue to go public, right? Like what, and I was saying I would encourage open AI to go public today, right? We think more, I think an bill agrees more of these companies should go public. We think they can go public smaller. We understand if you're a microcaps and you don't have great margins and you're not growing fast, you can't go public. But aren't there a lot of companies that could be public today? Yeah. I mean, if you look at some of the big unicorns, they could definitely go public. But I think there's two criteria. One is can you get to a billion of revenue? Yes. Open AI would be check, check, check the box. But the second one is do you have a sort of a break even or a path to break even? The only thing I don't know the specifics of open AI is, but what if you had a billion of revenue, but like an enormous cash burn and by the way, that cash run is really smart. It helps consolidate as a clear number one. But will the public markets be scared if the cash burn is disproportionate?

我们刚刚在讨论这个估值100亿美元的首次公开募股（IPO），对吧？这意味着大约需要10亿美元的收入才能上市，对吗？我建议OpenAI现在就上市。我们认为，更多类似这样的公司应该上市。我们也觉得它们可以在规模较小的时候上市。我们理解，如果您是微型上市公司，并且没有很好的利润率且增长速度慢，是无法上市的。但难道现在没有很多可以上市的公司吗？是的。如果你看看一些大型独角兽公司，它们绝对可以上市。但是我认为需要满足两个标准。第一个是能否达到10亿美元的收入？对于OpenAI，这一点是没有问题的。但第二个是有没有实现收支平衡的能力或计划？我对OpenAI的具体情况不太了解，但假设它有10亿美元的收入，同时现金流消耗很大。然而，这样的现金流消耗确实很聪明，因为它帮助公司巩固了作为市场第一的地位。但如果现金流消耗过大，公众市场是否会因此感到担忧呢？

But the private markets, the investors, they know that there's a bit of a winner take all in. They might be more patient. Now that's just an open AI, SpaceX, amazing company. That's sort of quasi public, but why don't you give retail investors a chance to invest in SpaceX? They should have that right. That's what it might happen. If you're right about the billion though, like if you have to have a billion of revenue and be growing, right, you got to be at what, 30% growth, 25, like if that's the hurdle rate, then how many VC companies are ever going to make it to that level?

但在私人市场，投资者们知道这里存在一定的“赢者通吃”的局面。他们可能会更有耐心。现在，这不仅是像OpenAI和SpaceX这样令人惊叹的公司。这些公司有点像半公开的，但为什么不给散户投资者一个投资SpaceX的机会呢？他们应该拥有这样的权利。这很可能会发生。但如果你关于收入应该达到十亿美元的说法是正确的，那么公司需要维持30%或25%的增长率，对吧？如果这是门槛的话，那么有多少风险投资公司能够实现这样的水平呢？

Like, like, that would be my question. I was speaking to your former colleague, Eric, at Ben Schmark, and he's like, this is a problem for the venture business. This is a problem for portfolio. There's going to be less exits and bigger exits. It's going to make the business that much more risky and do we need to adapt in ways that maybe you have to reinvest behind your best companies because there's not going to be as many of them as you need to provide companies, the ability to win in other ways. What's weird to me is that the government, by trying to protect small companies and not allowing big companies to buy small companies, so big companies get bigger, I think it's got the reverse effect. We're now small companies have one less chance of winning and thus the public market is even less willing to hold a small company because it's less willing that it gets bought.

翻译如下：就像，就像，这就是我的问题。我之前和你以前的同事埃里克谈过，他在Ben Schmark，他觉得这对于风险投资行业来说是个麻烦。这对投资组合来说也是个问题。退出会变少，而且退出的规模会变大。这会让这个行业变得更加风险重重。我们是否需要做出某些调整，比如在我们最优质的公司上进行再投资，因为可能不会有足够多的公司提供给我们，以便为公司在其他方面的获胜提供机会。让我觉得奇怪的是，政府试图通过保护小公司，不允许大公司收购小公司，来让大公司变得更大，我认为这产生了相反的效果。现在小公司失去了一次获胜的机会，因此公众市场也更不愿意持有小公司的股份，因为它们被收购的可能性更低。

So why bother with small companies when you can just on big guys, I love you and I love you reinvesting me, reinvesting me on this amazing butt-past that I'm going to do with some other people. Thank you, thank you, brother. That's great. He was good timing. I mean, by the way, he's also just one of a kind human. Tiger, too. You know, and so it's fun to see him and glad he jumped in here. You know, Bill, I think it's a, you know, one of the things he was talking about got me thinking about something. You know, boards of directors, you know, they have influence over whether these companies go public, okay? And it starts early, you know, in the boardroom about setting the conditions and building the company in a way it's built to go public.

为什么要费心去关注小公司呢，当你可以专注于大企业的时候？我爱你，我也很感激你对我的再投资，和我一起参与这个绝妙的计划。我非常感谢你，兄弟。那真是太好了。他的时机把握得很好。顺便说一下，他也是个独一无二的人。Tiger也是如此，你知道，看到他很有趣，我很高兴他能加入我们。Bill，我觉得他刚才提到的一些事情让我有了新的想法。你知道，董事会对公司是否上市有很大的影响。这个决定从很早以前就开始了，在董事会上就要开始设定条件并构建公司的发展方向，以便最终顺利上市。

And I think one of the problems, you know, here we talk about it reflexively. I think we're going to look back at this. I happen to be more optimistic on this. I think we're going to look at this period. It's going to be a byproduct of the age of excess. This is going to be like all these companies race too much money at too high evaluation during the Zurp period. And therefore they couldn't go public and frankly too many boards bought into this state private forever business. I think there is a whole new category of company coming that I hope that you leave the charge. I leave the charge and they leave the charge. There is no reason these companies if we set the conditions early in the business, stay fit, get profitable. You know, you don't have to grow at all costs. Don't race too much capital. Don't set the valuations to high. You know, they can get public. But you know, it's going to be an interesting way to see how it works out.

我认为这里有一个问题，我们本能地讨论它。我对这个问题持更乐观的态度。我认为将来我们回顾这一时期，会把它视为过度时代的产物。这就像是所有公司在零利率期间筹集过多资金，估值过高，因此无法上市，很多董事会也盲目追求“永远私有”这种模式。我认为会出现一类全新的公司，希望您、我和其他人能够引领潮流。其实只要在创业初期设定好条件，让公司保持健康盈利，不必不计一切代价地追求增长，不要筹集过多资本，也不要把估值设得太高，这些公司完全有可能上市。这将是一个观察结果非常有趣的过程。

But before we transition to our last topic, I would point out one irony from all that we heard today and what you just said, which is if the 1400 number of private unicorns that are the result of the age of excess is a problem. It's not clear to me that we're doing anything different in AI. Aren't we doing the exact same thing? So couldn't we end up with the exact same rules? We just said 5X and 6X higher valuation. You said something to me a few weeks ago that I think is spot on. Right. I think 15 years ago, not a lot of people talked about the power law. Right. Maybe there was a small cadre, a small membership, you know, once handheld road that talked about power law. Today, everybody knows about power law distributions and venture returns, right? And so if there is any sniff that a company in AI link is going to be the winner. They get 400 million dollars. The amount of capital that jages it.

在我们过渡到最后一个话题之前，我想指出今天我们所听到的内容和你刚刚说的话中的一个讽刺之处。那就是，如果说因为过度的时代造成了1400家私营独角兽是个问题，那么我不确定我们在人工智能领域是否有任何不同。不也是在做同样的事情吗？所以我们不能得到完全相同的结果吗？我们刚刚提到估值提高了5倍或6倍。几周前你跟我说的一件事我觉得特别有道理。对，15年前，不是很多人谈论幂律法则的力量。也许只有少数人，一个小圈子，曾经简单地谈论过幂律。如今，每个人都知道幂律分布和风险投资的回报。所以如果有任何迹象表明某家人工智能公司会成为赢家，他们就会获得4亿美元的投资。资本流动的速度之快令人惊叹。

So, you know, I think that's an interesting question. I think it's very difficult for founders to resist the urge to take the money. I think it's very difficult for founders to resist the urge to take the highest valuation. I encourage them to reverse engineer from the outcome, the liquidity outcome they hope to achieve. If you take a lot of money at a valuation, well over a billion dollars, the probability of you getting sold or you getting public is just a lot harder. That's just the truth. Before we move off in the venture section, one of the things I love a bunch of founders running around here, you and I met with one or two of them earlier. And just a few of the anecdotes that I'm, you know, that I'm seeing and that I'm hearing. I spent some time with Scott Wu. I'm an angel investor in cognition. And Scott is building, you know, Satya referenced him wall on stage.

我觉得这是一个很有趣的问题。我认为创业者很难抵挡住拿钱的诱惑，尤其是获得最高估值的诱惑。我鼓励他们从希望实现的结果和流动性目标进行逆向思考。如果你在估值超过十亿美元的情况下接受大量投资，那么你被收购或上市的概率就会更低。这是事实。在我们离开风投话题之前，我想说我很喜欢看到很多创业者在这里忙碌。我们之前也见过一两个他们中的人。我听到并看到的一些事情，还包括我曾与Scott Wu交流过。我是一家叫Cognition的公司的天使投资人，Scott正在打造一些东西，Satya在台上也提到过他。

Says, you know, Copilot is building effectively auto complete, allowing engineers to become more productive. Cognition is building engineers. And I asked Scott, how many employees do you have? Because I think he has tens of thousands of enterprise customers already. And he said, 18. I said, how do you do all this work with only 18 people? He said, we have 100 devins. We have 100 agentic engineers that are helping us write code. That's a theme I've heard from Glean. I heard from distil. I heard from cognition, this idea that we're going to have in Satya referenced it, a workforce of people, right? And then not so distant future that are going to be able to take these multi-step functions. Go build me a website, right? No longer just complete a line of code, but complete an entire task.

这段话的大意是：有人提到，Copilot本质上是在建立自动补全功能，使工程师提高生产力。而Cognition正在“打造”工程师。我问Scott，你有多少员工？因为我认为他已经有成千上万个企业客户了。他说，只有18个。我问他，只有18个人是怎么完成这么多工作的？他说，我们有100个开发智能助理，我们有100个帮助我们编写代码的智能工程师。这是我从Glean、distil和Cognition听到的一个主题，Satya也提到过。这种想法是，在不久的将来，我们会有一支能够完成多步骤任务的“员工”队伍，比如说，去帮我搭建一个网站。不再只是完成一行代码，而是完成整个任务。

We were just with our friend from Glean and who's building a great enterprise search product. But you don't have to squint that hard to think that that could be your enterprise assistant, right? They could go perform tasks on your behalf. So put me in the camp again. I don't know the time series, but I do think that we're on a path toward human replacement, not just augmentation. I think those folks in this period of dislocation will get consumed in other tasks. So I don't think this is a net negative for society, but I do think you'll have dislocation before you necessarily have that growth on the other side.

我们刚刚和来自Glean的朋友见面，他正在开发一个很棒的企业搜索产品。但你不需要费太大劲就能想象，这个产品可能成为你的企业助理，对吧？它们可以代表你执行任务。所以让我再次表达我的看法吧。我不知道具体的时间轴，但我确实认为我们正在走向人类被替代的道路，而不仅仅是技能的增强。我认为在这个变动期，那些失去原有工作的人会投入到其他任务中。因此，我不认为这对社会是一个负面影响，但我确实认为，在你看到另一侧的增长之前，会经历一个动荡时期。

I was just saying one thing real quick, because I gave a speech 20 years ago or so about how we evolved with our tools. And you wouldn't try and run a high production farm without a tractor. You wouldn't do it with a plow in an oxen. And that just always has been true in our society. And so if you are a programmer who's worried about this, the best thing you can do is run at it. Like go hang out, play with cognition, get into get home copilot. Like that and learn, you know, such as said that the ordering of the workflow of writing code is changing as a result of this. You won't know that unless you're in it.

我只是想快速说一下，因为大约20年前我发表过一场关于我们与工具如何共生进化的演讲。你不会试图在没有拖拉机的情况下进行高产量的农场工作，也不会用犁和牛来完成。这种情况在我们的社会中一直如此。所以，如果你是一名对这个问题感到担心的程序员，最好的办法就是迎头赶上。例如，你可以去体验一下与人工智能相关的认知工具，试试GitHub Copilot。通过这样做，你会学到很多，比如说由于这些工具的影响，编写代码的工作流程顺序正在发生变化。如果不亲身参与其中，你是不会知道这些变化的。

100% 100% and a lot of the talk here is not just about who the winners are, to the losers are. Right. The losers in the public market, you know, companies that are slow. Think about if you were a company slow to adopt the internet in 2000, if you were a retail enterprise, you said, I don't need any commerce capability. Right. Right. That was a very bad decision. I think in 2024, if you're any company and you say, I'm going to be, you know, I don't need to do all this AI stuff. I don't need, you need to be there. Even if you choose not to adopt it because I think failure to learn how to reinvent your business. I don't think you have to worry about this. I think most of them are, they are on it. They're on it.

翻译成中文：很多讨论不仅仅是关于谁是赢家，还有谁是输家。对吧。那些在公开市场上的输家，比如那些反应慢的公司。想想看，如果你是2000年时一家慢于采用互联网的公司，作为一家零售企业，你说我不需要任何电子商务能力。对吧。这是一个非常糟糕的决定。我认为到了2024年，如果你是任何企业，你说，我不需要做这些人工智能相关的事情。我不需要，你需要在那里。即使你选择不采用它，因为我认为如果不能学会如何重新发明你的业务，这会是一个失败。我不认为你需要担心这个。我想大多数人都在关注这个问题。他们已经在行动了。

Well, another topic I think that, you know, we've talked about on this pod. We had some developments on this week, you know, and I wanted to dig deeper in. And this is to the shareholder vote as it pertains to Tesla. So we know now that Elon has won the vote for the second time. Retail investors, I think voted 90, 10 in favor, institutional investors, something like 70, 30 in favor. I mean, even the passive ETF Vanguard voted in favor of the package, okay? But there was a big reveal here this week. I think I think some tectonic plates started moving on something that you and I have identified as an issue for a long time. And it relates to ISS, institutional shareholder services and glass Lewis. So both of those organizations recommended a no vote or a vote against the shareholder package, okay?

好的，还有一个话题，我觉得我们在这个播客里谈过。我们这周有一些进展，我想深入探讨。就是关于特斯拉的股东投票。我们现在知道，埃隆第二次获得了投票胜利。散户投资者大约以90比10的比例投赞成票，机构投资者差不多是70比30的比例投赞成票。即便是被动型的ETF公司Vanguard也投了赞成票，好吗？但本周这里有一个重大披露。我认为有些关键性变化正在发生，而这些问题是你我长期以来已经注意到的。这与ISS（机构股东服务）和Glass Lewis有关。这两个机构都建议对股东方案投反对票。

Now that in and of itself is not that unusual. Although I don't think it made sense because it was clearly in the best interest of shareholders, right? Stockwood, it did go up. Right. And, you know, so I started looking in again. I know you and I started talking about the background of ISS and just as a reminder, you know, ISS was founded in 1985. And the mission of the company is to provide advisory services to institutional investors supposedly to do research and governance on their performance and to help shareholders make informed decisions as to what would maximize their own value in the business.

现在，这本身并不是什么不寻常的事情。虽然我觉得这不太合理，因为这显然是符合股东的最佳利益，对吧？股票确实上涨了。对。而且，你知道，我又开始深入研究。我知道你和我开始讨论ISS的背景，顺便提醒一下，ISS成立于1985年。这家公司的使命是为机构投资者提供咨询服务，主要是研究和管理他们的表现，帮助股东做出明智的决策，以便最大化他们在业务中的自身价值。

And while all this sounds benign enough, many of us have argued over the years that ISS veered off course, right? And this started becoming kind of this cudgel to, you know, to coerce board behavior into ways that they deemed, right, in maybe societal best interest or in their perceived best interest as opposed to the corporate best interest. You and I have both served on boards where board members have said, well, I can't do this or I can't do that because of ISS. You know, some of the best boards in the world like Netflix takes it on the chin from ISS all the time because they don't do the things that ISS sanctions as worthy.

虽然这些听起来足够温和，但多年来我们中的许多人一直认为ISS偏离了正轨，对吗？事情开始有点变成了一种工具，去迫使董事会的行为方式符合他们认为可能是社会的最大利益，或者是他们自身的最大利益，而不是公司的最大利益。你和我都曾在董事会任职，董事会成员常常说，他们不能这样做或者不能那样做，因为ISS的约束要求。即使像Netflix这样的一流公司，也常常因为没有遵循ISS认为值得认可的标准而受到批评。

In fact, this got so bad that at the end of the beginning of 2023, 21 state attorney generals wrote a letter to ISS demanding that they explain anglas Lewis to explain their advocacy objectives, right? So in this instance, I think the fact that Vanguard, right, which is passive, these are not active investors that they came out and they voted in the opposite direction of glass Lewis and ISS. I think it just laid bare some of the nonsense associated with these recommendations. And I really wonder whether this is going to cause a ripple effect, right, where people start pushing back now on ISS and glass Lewis, right, because of a passive investor can do it. Certainly. And the active investors from retail institutional, they rejected ISS and glass Lewis straight out.

实际上，这件事情变得如此严重，以至于在2023年年初时，21个州的总检察长联名致信ISS，要求他们解释他们的倡导目标。因此，在这种情况下，我认为，有趣的是，像先锋集团这样主要进行被动投资的公司，却在投票中与Glass Lewis和ISS采取相反的立场。我认为这揭示了一些与这些建议相关的不合理之处。我真的很想知道这是否会引起连锁反应，让更多的人开始质疑ISS和Glass Lewis，毕竟连被动投资者都能推翻他们的意见。当然，来自零售和机构的主动投资者直接拒绝了ISS和Glass Lewis的建议。

So what do you in any? Well, a couple things. So one, I actually spoke to some people at ISS and their research group prior to our SBC conversation. And it became clear to me from talking to them that they're mostly backward looking. They talk to investors after the fact and say, do they appreciate this particular thing or not? And they're not doing first principles thinking around shareholder alignment. And you know, and you said it lost their way. I mean, it became a network effect, right? They charge both the company end of shareholder and like, it is certainly. I mean, if there's a do-op, I believe we should worry about in this country is probably ISS and glass Lewis.

那么，你在任何情况下会做什么呢？其实有几件事情。首先，我在我们的SBC对话之前，和ISS（机构股东服务）及其研究团队的一些人进行了交流。从与他们的对话中我了解到，他们主要是从过去的情况出发进行分析。他们在事后与投资者沟通，询问他们是否认可特定的事务，但并没有从基本原则出发来考虑股东利益是否一致。你提到他们失去了方向，这成为了一种网络效应。他们对公司和股东两端都收费。我认为，如果在这个国家有一个需要担心的垄断现象，可能就是ISS和Glass Lewis这两家公司的影响力。

Well, it's been every board to follow their Marching. And the number one reason I hear very valid reason for companies to have superboding is so they don't get held up by these companies in their attempt to do the right thing and implement a compensation package that is aligned with shareholder. And as I said to you back then, and I believe even more today and I've seen more copycats of it, the E-LON package is the most shareholder aligned compensation package I've ever seen. I would be thrilled if all of my hired CEOs had a very similar package. Right. I'd be thrilled.

好的，每个董事会都在跟随他们的指引。而我听到公司有超级投票权的头号原因，是为了在实施与股东利益一致的薪酬方案时不受这些公司阻碍。当时我就和你说过，如今我更加确信，并且看到更多效仿的例子，E-LON方案是我见过的最符合股东利益的薪酬方案。如果我所聘请的CEO们都能有一个非常相似的方案，我会非常高兴。是的，我会很高兴。

Yeah. I think most of them wouldn't take it because it requires outsize performance. I think it's excellent. I think that it's ridiculous that Netflix would ever get a no vote on anything because they've had incredible stock performance and industry leading low delusion with their very innovative approach to compensation. It would be fun to look at a district. And I actually had a chance to talk with the co-CEOs recently and they were still getting push it back because I was applauding them on their structure. And one of their board members said, well, they are even considering change because I, as that won't leave them alone. And it's just, it's horrific.

是的，我认为大多数人不会接受这个，因为它需要超高的表现。我觉得这很出色。我觉得Netflix在任何事情上被投反对票都是荒谬的，因为他们的股票表现非常出色，并且在薪酬方案上非常具有创新性，行业领先，稀释度极低。看看一个区会很有趣。我最近有机会与他们的两位联合CEO交谈，我称赞他们的结构，但他们仍然受到压力。有一位董事会成员甚至说他们正在考虑改变，因为我一直在坚持不懈。实在是令人难以置信。

But anyway, there's one other thing. And you know, that I would highlight about this. They relate more to the Delaware situation. So it's my belief that the many of the attorneys and lawyers that live in the Delaware ecosystem were very eager for Tesla to appeal this thing and push it to the Delaware Supreme Court. It has been wildly discussed here in other places. The reason that people chose Delaware is 100 years. I went back and looked up today. Over 100 years of practice of being business friendly. Obviously, all these companies aren't located in Delaware. They're just choosing this, and they're choosing this place because of its history of precedent and its history of how they adjudicate different things.

无论如何，还有另外一件事需要强调。这与特拉华州的情况更相关。我的看法是，特拉华州法律界的许多律师非常希望特斯拉对此事上诉，并将其提交给特拉华州最高法院。在这里和其他地方对此进行了广泛讨论。人们选择特拉华州的原因是其有上百年对企业友好的历史。我今天特意查了一下，特拉华州在这方面的实践已经有100多年了。显然，这些公司并不都位于特拉华州，他们选择在这里是因为这个地方的判例历史和他们处理不同问题的方式。

And people felt that it was in the company's best interest here today with the Tesla situation. We have a company whose stock performed incredibly well and was brought to heal by a lawyer and a law firm with a contingent, you know, derivative lawsuit. There, there one customer had nine shares of stock. Nine shares. They went up. Yes. And the fact that, oh, I could be a public company in Delaware. My stock could go up. I can be, and then they asked for $5 billion in compensation to lawyer. They're still asking for it. And they had one customer nine shares. How do you ask for $5 billion?

今天，人们认为在特斯拉的情况下，这对公司来说是最好的选择。我们看到了一家公司，其股票表现极其出色，但却因为一位律师和一家法律事务所发起的衍生诉讼而受到影响。其中，有位客户持有九股股票，仅仅九股。然而，他们的价值却上升了。是的，人们会想，“哦，我可以是一家特拉华州的上市公司，我的股票可以上涨。”然后，他们竟然向律师索要50亿美元的赔偿，他们至今还在要求赔偿。而那位客户仅有九股股票。凭什么要求50亿美元呢？

If I will say this, first of all, I think that these people that live in Delaware are very fearful that they won't actually be an appeal because then this thing just stands out there. And I think it's horrible for the entire Delaware. It says, if I were the governor of Delaware, I would be scared, scared, scared about what might be happened. If this judge hands out any penalty anywhere close that has this over a hundred million even. I think companies need to consider leaving Delaware as fast as possible. I mean, first, it's such a bad, you know, case law, right, in the state of Delaware. I mean, your point, the various states of the country, the vigilante lawyers chasing any company with high performance or a big market cap and just trying to get them on a gotcha first. Sure.

如果我要说这个，首先，我认为住在特拉华州的人非常担心他们不会得到上诉的机会，因为这样的话事情就搁置在那里。我认为这对整个特拉华州来说是很糟糕的。可以说，如果我是特拉华州的州长，我会非常害怕，担心将来可能发生的事情。如果法官开出了任何接近一亿多美元的罚款，我觉得这很可怕。我认为公司需要考虑尽快离开特拉华州。首先，这是一个非常不利的案例法，对吧，在特拉华州。而且，在全国各州，高绩效或高市值的公司常常被所谓的"义务"律师盯上，他们追着这些公司，只为找出他们的漏洞。

If they can get a judge to give them this type of corporate, the corporate code that exists in various states around this country is very similar. There's a model corporate code. And most of them adopt it. This predicated on Delaware's corporate code. What makes Delaware so different is a hundred years of precedent of case law, which is very supportive of a lot of issues, which are important to companies that predictability led companies to incorporate there. Now we've thrown predictability out the window, right? And now we're talking about despite two shareholder votes that both voted in favor of giving any law in this package, both before and contemporaneous and now that they're going to go back if they award, I'm not not 100 million dollars bill if they award one dollar, right?

如果他们能让法官批准这种形式的公司，美国各州现有的公司法规都非常相似。有一个模型公司法规，大多数州都采用了它。这是基于特拉华州的公司法规。特拉华州与众不同的地方在于它拥有一百年的判例法，这对公司非常重要，因为它提供了公司的可预见性，因此许多公司选择在那里注册成立。但现在我们已经将这种可预见性抛诸脑后。而且，尽管两次股东投票都支持这个法律方案中的任何法律，如果他们做出裁决，不管是100百万美元还是1美元，他们都要重新考虑。

I think you're going to see companies in the state of Delaware that leave the state of Delaware. And by the way, I think we should be encouraging them to leave the state of Delaware if that's the case, because I would like to see a lot more jurisdictions develop a lot more friendly corporate codes, friendly precedent, you know, for these companies. The reality is if we can't support a performance based compensation package for a company, then what are we doing? Look at the garbage packages that people get paid tens of millions of dollars on stock goes down. Companies are terrible. ISS is cheering that that's a good compensation package and that's no problem in the state of Delaware. Not the big one person, but people have highlighted that the CEO of GM has made tens and tens of millions of dollars stock hasn't gone anywhere.

我觉得你会看到一些在特拉华州的公司离开这个州。另外，如果真是这样，我认为我们应该鼓励它们离开，因为我希望看到更多地区发展更为友好的公司法规和先例。现实是，如果我们不能支持基于绩效的公司薪酬方案，那我们在做什么呢？看看那些在股价下跌中还拿着数千万美元的糟糕薪酬方案。公司表现糟糕，ISS还认为这是个不错的薪酬方案，在特拉华州这没问题。不是针对某一个人，但有人指出，通用汽车的CEO赚了数千万美元，但股价并没有明显上涨。

And if they want to chase somebody, it's chasing that situation, but I couldn't agree with you more. I think this is a very serious topic. I think that the, you know, even I think like the Wall Street Journal in New York Times, they missed this point. And as you said, if it's not about shareholder alignment, what's the point? Right.

如果他们想追求某个目标，那就是解决这个情况，但我完全同意你的看法。我认为这是一个非常严肃的话题。即使是《华尔街日报》和《纽约时报》这样的媒体也没有抓住这个问题的重点。正如你所说，如果不涉及股东利益的统一，那么又有什么意义呢？对吧。

And then the last thing I would say is we started by talking about the dirt of IPOs and why our company is going public. If this is the type of thing you expose yourself to by writing public, then I understand why there are less public companies. And I actually think in addition to the fact that everyone in Delaware should be afraid of this, I think the SEC should be afraid of it. Like you shouldn't want this type of activity, this type of derivative suit to come to the table because with nine shareholders and an ask for $4 billion, it's clearly a shake down. You wouldn't want that in your public marketing.

最后我想说的是，我们一开始讨论了IPO的风险以及我们公司为什么要上市。如果公开上市会让我们面临这样的情况，那么我理解为什么现在上市公司越来越少。除了特拉华州的每个人应该对此感到担忧，我认为美国证券交易委员会（SEC）也应该对此感到害怕。你不应该希望这种类型的活动，这种衍生诉讼出现，因为只有九个股东却要求40亿美元，这明显是敲诈。这种情况不应该出现在你的公开市场活动中。

Right. How do we give assurances to other companies that are reincorporating in Nevada, reincorporating in Texas? You know, Tesla's moved to, you know, was approved to move to Texas. How do we give them comfort? You know, they're going to be protected there against these types of issues. I have work to do. I need to learn more.

好的。我们如何向那些正在内华达州和德克萨斯州重新注册的公司提供保证呢？比如特斯拉已经获得批准迁往德克萨斯州。我们如何让他们感到放心，让他们在面对这些类型的问题时能够受到保护呢？我还有很多工作要做，我需要了解更多信息。

Yeah. And you know, as much as I would say, the governor of Delaware should be afraid of the governor of Nevada and the governor of Texas should be putting together a task force to take advantage of this and to answer the question that you posed. Like what needs to be in place? Can you borrow some of the precedent case law? I don't know. Right. Works, but like, it's a, it's a, I'm shocked based on everything I've been told my whole life about. Why?

好的。你知道，我认为，特拉华州的州长应该对内华达州的州长感到担忧，而德克萨斯州的州长应该成立一个特别小组来抓住这一机会，并回答你提出的问题：需要具备哪些条件？能借鉴一些判例法吗？我不太清楚。这件事真的让我感到震惊，与我一生中听到的一切相悖。为什么会这样呢？

I say, why are all these companies incorporating Delaware? Oh, it's the most business-friendly state from a, from a judicial standpoint. This blows that out. Well, I mean, one of the things I, again, I'll go, you know, call my corporate law buddies up as well. Why can't the state of Texas say, you know, because you can't just make precedent up.

我说，为什么所有这些公司都在特拉华州注册呢？哦，从法律的角度来看，这个州对企业最友好。这就解释了原因。我想，我还是打电话给我的公司法朋友们问问。为什么德克萨斯州不能这样做呢？因为你不能凭空创造先例。

Precedent has to be the byproduct of somebody bringing a lawsuit. That just takes time. But you can draft it into your corporate code vision. Like you could simply say that, you know, we're not going to allow these type of derivative lawsuits with, you know, that are totally, you know, a farce with nine shares to be broad and $5 billion of, you know, of a war. I suspect, I suspect you could take a industry-leading LLM and scans through the case precedent and help codify. I bet you love it.

前例必须是有人提起诉讼的结果，而这需要时间。但是，你可以将其纳入公司的法规愿景中。比如，你可以简单地规定，我们不允许那种涉及九股股票却要求50亿美元赔偿的虚假衍生诉讼。我怀疑，你可以使用行业领先的大型语言模型（LLM），扫描案例前例，帮助编写法规。我相信你会喜欢这种方式。

You know, for sure. So tonight, you and I and Feliz have, you know, we're going to do a panel with Larry Summers. And we're going to talk a little bit about, you know, what the world looks like in 10 to 15 years as a byproduct of AI and some of the consequences, you know, that we may see. And when you abstract away the next five years, you know, because who knows how long this is going to take and whether we bump up against scaling laws and all these other things, when you look out 10 to 15, what are, you know, any thoughts about, you know, what you want to hear, maybe from Larry or, you know, big picture thoughts that you have.

你知道的，没错。今晚你、我和Feliz将和Larry Summers一起参加一个小组讨论。我们将聊聊人工智能在10到15年后可能对世界产生的影响，以及我们可能看到的一些后果。当你把未来五年短期内可能发生的事情抛开不谈时，因为谁也不知道这一过程会花多久，以及我们是否会遇到规模定律等问题，展望未来10到15年，你有没有一些想法，关于你希望从Larry那里听到什么，或者你自己对全局有何看法。

Do you think the world is over its skis again, Bill? Or do you think this is, is this 2000 where we're going to go through perhaps a little bit of a rough patch here, but when we look back 10 or 15 years, it's going to be way bigger and way more consequential than we thought. I didn't know you were going to ask me this question, but I'll tell you the one thing that, that's on my mind.

你认为世界是否又一次处于超前状态，比尔？或者你觉得这像是2000年，我们可能会经历一些困难时期，但当我们回顾10或15年后，会发现这一时期比我们想象的要更大、更具影响力。我不知道你会问我这个问题，但我会告诉你，目前我心中的一个想法。

And then I'll ask you the same question, but I really don't believe in the declobalization push that's coming from either of these presidential, I just don't believe in it. I believe in Ricardo's comparative advantage. I believe in lifting all people out of poverty, not just people that happen to be born in the same country as you are. And that happens through globalization.

然后我会问你同样的问题，但我真的不相信这些总统所推动的去全球化趋势。我相信李嘉图的比较优势理论。我相信应该让所有人摆脱贫困，而不仅仅是那些恰好和你出生在同一国家的人。这需要通过全球化来实现。

And I just think more people are like, the most people that are ever been made better off by one person was in China and Ding Xiaoping brought half a billion people out of poverty. And that happened by introducing capital. And I just hope we can find a way to stop vilifying China and to stop thinking that you're going to re-enshore a whole bunch of, man, in fact, I don't think we'll be competitive globally.

我认为，很多人没有意识到，历史上通过一个人让最多人受益的事情就是在中国发生的，正是邓小平让五亿人摆脱了贫困。他是通过引入资本来实现这一点的。我希望我们能找到一种方法，停止妖魔化中国，停止认为我们可以将大量制造业重新迁回本土，因为实际上，我不认为这样我们能在全球竞争中保持竞争力。

And that's what's on my mind. Man, it's an interesting question. If you flipped it back around, I'm really interested in the productivity gains that I think we can achieve, like the big unlock here. I'm interested in if he sees those same level of productivity gains that perhaps we saw in the 80s and 90s. I'm really interested in how he thinks about our national competitive advantage, right?

这就是我在思考的问题。伙计，这个问题很有趣。如果换个角度来思考，我对我们能实现的生产力提升非常感兴趣，这就像打开了一把大锁。我很好奇他是否也看到了类似于我们在80年代和90年代所经历的生产力提升。我也非常想知道他如何看待我们的国家竞争优势，对吧？

Like the United States, if you just look at the performance over the last 10 years, has been a byproduct of a lot of this globalization. But I also see the flywheel spinning like you just look around here. We have a system of risk capital that's better than anywhere in the world. We have a system of risk taking an entrepreneurship that's better than anywhere in the world, the rate of innovation, better than anywhere in the world. And so to me, it also.

像美国一样，如果只看过去10年的表现，这些成就在很大程度上是全球化的产物。但我也看到了一种积极的循环正在形成——只要看看我们周围。我们拥有全球最优秀的风险资本体系，最优秀的风险承担和创业精神，以及全球最高的创新速度。因此，对我来说，情况也是如此。

Well, let's open up to a skilled innovation gap. Yeah, no. I mean, that's absolutely one. And I was not to go off piece here, but I was talking with the president of a major FinTech company last night, public company, who was at the business roundtable with Trump. He said, they were all shocked. Their jaws were on the ground. Trump walks into the room, starts talking about immigration. And while he says we got an illegal immigrant problem, we got to tighten the borders, they said it was the first time they ever heard him say, and I got to solve the problem for everybody in this room, how I get you more talented workers.

好吧，让我们来讨论一下如何填补技能创新的差距。是的，我的意思是，这绝对是一个重要的问题。我不想跑题，但昨晚我和一家主要金融科技公司的总裁聊过，这家公司是上市公司，他曾和特朗普一起参加过商业圆桌会议。他说，当时他们都感到震惊，目瞪口呆。特朗普走进房间，开始谈论移民问题。他说我们有非法移民问题，需要加强边境管控。但让他们惊讶的是，这是他们第一次听到特朗普说，他要解决在场所有人面临的另一个问题：如何为大家找到更多有才华的工人。

And he proposed something apparently at the roundtable. He said, anybody who comes here for a four-year education completes their degree in the United States, we're going to give him a green card. I liked it. Okay. If that's true, this is one of our huge issues. This is the best place on the planet to start these businesses because of ecosystems like this. But ultimately, Elon came here. Larry and Sergei. Not so many.

他在圆桌会议上提出了一个建议。据说，他说，任何来这里接受四年制教育并在美国完成学位的人，我们都将给他们绿卡。我觉得这个提议不错。如果这是真的，那就解决了我们的一个重要问题。因为有这样的生态系统，这里是地球上创业的最佳地点。但最终，像马斯克、拉里和谢尔盖这样的人来这里的人并不多。

So, I'm great to be with you. Yeah, good to see you. I look forward to chatting more tonight. Thanks for having us. Yeah. As a reminder, everybody, just our opinions, not investment advice.

很高兴和你在一起。见到你真好。我期待今晚能多聊聊。谢谢你的邀请。提醒一下大家，这只是我们的意见，不是投资建议。

Ep11. Coatue Conference Recap, Tesla &amp; ISS Controversy | BG2 with Bill Gurley &amp; Brad Gerstner

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Ep11. Coatue Conference Recap, Tesla & ISS Controversy | BG2 with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner