Jay Hoag

This is a really great business.

It's also a really hard business.

I think there's a whole bunch of players who think it's easy.

And I invested in these 10 companies.

They all were marked up and all was great.

And a lot, if you think about it, global financial crisis was a big reset in 08, 09, not so much for tech, but for the financial system.

And with the exception of 2022, it had only been up into the right for many people who were then 10, 12, 14 years into the business.

There still might be a lot of pain to be felt from some of the investments made during that period of time.

And there hasn't been a day of reckoning.

And a lot of investors have jumped on the AI bandwagon, not necessarily saying, pay no attention to this stuff over here.

We're an AI shop.

But I worry a little bit about some of the 2020, 2021 capital, which is enormous sum, being by and large broken capital, broken part of the system.

I used to describe when the internet bubble happened, venture returns went like this.

And venture egos went rhythmically.

And then bubble burst and returns to this.

And egos for a lot of people in the investment business didn't come down.

Success has many fathers, failures an orphan.

Do it if you love it.

Don't do it because you think it's going to be financially rewarding.

It can be, but success has to precede that.