Katherine Boyle
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Right.
Like the godfather of Silicon Valley comes out and he says, we're investing in America.
People perk up and they listen.
And so it completely changed the game.
Later it became a meme.
Other people started raising funds off of it.
But the thing I think I'm most proud of is within a year, a lot of peer funds or what's called peer funds, like firms of our size or other famous firms that operate in the Valley, almost all of them had decoupled from their China practices.
At the same time, like Mike Gallagher and the China Special Committee that was happening in Congress and a bunch of people in the DC side, they woke up about this.
It's like, OK, Silicon Valley is saying, hey, we need to invest in America too.
Important people in Silicon Valley are saying that.
And so they started putting, I think, a little bit of pressure.
The TikTok wars were happening, right?
People were really starting to say, okay, how is TikTok being weaponized against American kids?
And it just became too much for a lot of these firms who had been investing for 15 years in China to be able to make a good faith argument that it's fine, that we're sending American money, American know-how, and that we're making tons of money off of technology that's being used as a weapon against the United States.
And so pretty much all of these firms had to divest or decouple themselves.
They turned into separate funds where there was no sharing of information, no sharing of carry of sort of the economics among the partners.
But I think five years ago, I wouldn't have believed that would have happened.
It was too much money.
It was too big business.
People had way too many entrenched interests in China.