Bill Gurley

And a lot of the talks that I would give were based on what appeared to be inherent cyclicality.

in the venture business.

And that has been upset or kicked over or a little chaotic recently, which we'll get into.

I offer two qualifications as we dive into this.

The first would be, and Michael would appreciate this, I'm a huge fan of system-level thinking.

There's a book out there on how to think in systems that's pretty cool.

And all Michael and I's time at the Santa Fe Institute is basically tied to the theory that systems behave differently than their individual components.

And seeing across systems, it's not easy.

It's a difficult thing to do.

But as we dive in, I think a lot of the components of the industry are bouncing into one another.

And it's the...

aggregate effect of all those things that's super interesting.

And so you have to step back and look at it from far away.

And then I also want to qualify up front that I offer no judgment on any of their participants.

There are people and firms taking action that change the state of the field.

And I think they're all acting reasonably and in their best interest.

The aggregate effect may not be positive for the world, but I'm not ascribing malintent

or anything to anybody.

And I want to clarify that up front.

So if you'll allow me, I'll start to dive in.