Jason Lemkin

If I put a gun against Harry's head, he couldn't tell me about Corel, VisiCalc, Lotus, et cetera, et cetera.

And all of those stocks traded high and then went down.

But it doesn't matter a damn, because in the end, as a whole,

the system, the venture guys, the public markets were correct, which is, this is a big-ass trend, and the winner will be worth $4 trillion.

And if the losers, if you write off half a trillion in guessing to get there, you get there.

That's why it's very hard to fund an old-school SaaS company today, because people are just saying, look, you're great.

You're going two to five.

You're great.

You're a profitable company.

And again, this is the thing.

There's people who

rain down a little bit of VCs who kind of project a little contempt.

Oh, your little $100 million revenue thing doesn't matter.

I can come across as a little callous.

And a fairer statement is this.

Your $100 million revenue SaaS company is an awesome entrepreneurial achievement.

You are to be hugely congratulated.

It's magnificent.

It's just not something that we can properly finance.

because we're just not going to make our public market venture return here.