Jason Lemkin

You can't just say, oh, I wish I'd done something different with my life.

And now I wish there was an income.

You got to play the hand you're dealt.

And Jason's exactly right.

The first thing you do is say to yourself, I may not be able to raise much more venture capital on attractive terms, run my business accordingly.

I am now, just like I thought we were going to talk about the public SaaS stocks here, like you hinted in your questions, but you took us offline.

But it's the same thing.

Live in the world you now find yourself, which is where capital is no longer free for your sector.

If you describe that negatively, you can say it's because venture capitalists are fashion chasers.

If you describe it in a logical way, you can say it's because the kind of extraordinary growth has vanished from SaaS and has now reappeared in AI land.

Run your business the way you do it so you don't need capital.

Then, as Jason said, look at what these next generation people are doing and find a way to attach it to your business.

And if you grow at 50%, then 40, then 30, and you get to 200 million of revenue and you sell it five times, that's a billion dollars.

And if you have 20% of that, you have $200 million.

It makes you one of the probably, I've done this, Matt, about 20%.

in the top 5,000 richest people in the world, it's okay.

But it's a grind.

Because it's a grind explains exactly why venture guys aren't investing.

Because grind is not in our MO.

I mean, it happens with seed rounds.