Brian O’Malley

Whereas on the venture side, we were very much focused on which founders were going to be able to ultimately impact these massive markets and outflank the large incumbents that they were playing against.

And so we ran into a challenge at one point where I was personally looking at DoorDash and the growth team was looking at Postmates.

And if you looked at the lens that they were looking at the world through, Postmates was a really phenomenal investment candidate.

The lens I was looking at DoorDash through, DoorDash was a really phenomenal investment candidate.

But ultimately, that challenge of trying to look at both those deals at the same time, we ultimately invested in neither of them.

And both of them would have been real successful for the firm.

So those sorts of challenges can come up and you constantly try to navigate them and make sure that the pros outweigh the cons.

But additional dollars are, you know, are difficult to manage.

When you think about the incentives along the way, ultimately depends based on who you are in the organization and what you're really trying to accomplish.

If you think about someone who's been there for a long time and might be retiring soon, they might care more about the fees going into the management company, which are a direct proxy to the fund size, and maybe have less concerns about how that's going to play out 10, 15 years down the road.

If you have someone else who's been a successful investor, they are in the management company already, but they still have a good 10 plus years that they're looking to be investing at that firm.

They might care more about whether they're swinging for the fences and ultimately owning enough of important companies to be able to justify the fund size and the management fees that they've been getting.

And then you have other people who are coming up within the organization where they might have carry in the fund, but they're not going to see a dime of carry

until those management fees are paid back to the partner, they might be more focused on really just getting promoted to the next level.

And a lot of organizations, the best way to get promoted to the next level is to drive actual DPI returns, especially in an environment where we're not seeing a lot of that.

So those individuals might be more focused on, hey, what are some

five to six X return type deals where the timeframe is a little bit sooner.

I can get involved.

I can get out of that.

And that that's ultimately going to help me get promoted because additional promotions means that now I'm in a both more secure position in the firm, as well as my economic situation maybe has changed.