Jay Hoag

Yeah, I mentioned, yeah, we did this, I think, in September of 2021.

And as a longtime Chicago Cubs fan, I'm quite superstitious.

So I'm sure it didn't cause the tech reset in 2022, but let's hope that will not have a recurrence.

Let's see what's different.

There's always parallels and similarities to prior periods of time.

I guess what is different is...

particularly as technology has gotten so big over now the 30 years of TCV and the 43 years of my career, the focus on macro, which is not something I spent a lot of time focusing on, really is different.

So regulation of tech, how do tariffs impact global trade, all those issues which really were never part of the lexicon or focus for technology is probably something that's pretty new.

I think it's very difficult to figure out

A lot of people are talking greater authority about that, which I think they know very little.

That includes myself.

The world has shifted so strongly in the last several years.

And again, I'm leaving COVID out for the moment because that was such an unusual time.

Where I think as you think about technology investors, huge focus on SaaS, huge focus on all things AI.

and huge de-emphasis of consumer-based internet businesses.

And so I think that's actually a pretty interesting opportunity where one can be contrarian and we continue to see interesting private opportunities that I think most of the world's not focused on.

I don't think necessarily it's less white space because you could argue that the big, enormous Internet franchises, consumer Internet franchises that have emerged are playing on the opportunity set of five billion plus smartphone users, incredibly engaged audiences across gaming or music or entertainment or other media platforms.

and just incredible consumer engagement with those devices.

And therefore, that should create enormous opportunities for new consumer-based franchises.

It's always been hard to break through a virtual shelf space concept.