Jay Hoag

But early-stage investors, I'll use AI as an example, but also just in general, if an early-stage investor will have many more, I'll call them bets, but investments in a given fund,

in part because they want to have as many chips on the betting table as possible to get that one or two that really will pay off big.

Missing a significant portion of those, I think, for an early stage venture fund in any given vintage can be really problematic.

As a growth investor, we tend to run pretty concentrated.

So our typical fund might be 20 to 25 investments.

And so we really have to have conviction and we are focused on doing all that work ahead of time to say, this is the one in this category.

So we're not betting on two or three players in a given segment.

So it should be hard to get to a full yes.

And there should be a bunch of we're not sure.

I would say the similarity is rigor.

The differences, the degrees of aggressive or conservative vary by practitioner.

So it's actually a good mix.

Where do you fall on that spectrum?

Strangely, more on the aggressive side as it not taking unverified bets, but I'm not turned off if it's different because it's non-consensus.

It's good, again.

a quadrant consensus non-consensus right wrong if you're wrong and non-consensus that's really bad but if you're right it's often where the excess returns are of course the world can come to an end and all the current macro stuff could be a decade of unpleasantness in the world

But many of the companies I mentioned earlier, they showed an ability to grow through any and all environments.

If you look at churn rates for some of these subscription services during recessions, you can't see any difference.

So I have a firm believer in the best quality technology companies.

One may, at different points in time, have to be aggressive on valuation and pay more, but it will be a long-term win.