David George

So thinking about this as the market for design is way too limiting.

So you're just missing the point.

So we were debating it and it was like speaking past each other and finally Ben called it off.

He's like, okay, all right, we're not gonna solve this tonight.

And ultimately it was a call on the growth fund side and I slept on it and I woke up and I was like, look, this is an exceptional business model and we're squinting to believe enough on the market size.

Great founder, great business model.

Is the market good enough?

And I'm happy to take that risk.

The risk I don't want to take is quality of business, quality of founder.

But you really had to have a nuanced view of the market in order to get there, like with a traditional growth investing lens.

And so fortunately, we got there and it worked out really well.

I bring up that story, one, to say that's an example of something where the price is the price and you have to figure out if you can take it, if you're willing, for the very best of the best companies.

But two, I think it speaks to the advantage that we have and what you need to be successful in growth investing.

You need those product and market insights or you're just going to live in a spreadsheet and die in a spreadsheet.

So everything that we've done or I've done and our team has done to design a process of tightly integrating with our early stage teams has been in the spirit of optimizing insights around people, products and markets.

And I think that's where you actually get success.

Bob Swan, who is a longtime mentor and friend of mine and an operating partner at our firm, gave me this really good advice that he and John Donahoe at the end of every year always went through an exercise where they spent two hours looking at their calendar from the year.

And then they had an objective of cutting 30% of stuff that was on their calendar.

There was a way for them to make sure that they were giving responsibility down to the people on their teams, but also that they would get leverage.

So he's given me that.