Lucas Swisher

But without having that core market and that core trend, it's hard to get to 100 billion, right?

Like you could be in this niche area that's very hard to expand.

It's really easy to get an act one, but hard to get the act two and the act three and the act four.

And to build that enduring company, right, you see it with SaaS today.

You have to have the act two and the act three and the act four.

And those things, that's why they go really in tandem.

Ultimately, price always does matter, right?

I think some folks will say, price doesn't matter.

I think price does matter, but I think it matters least.

You, of course, could make the argument of, oh, Lucas, well, you do it five.

Why not six or seven or eight or nine or 10 billion?

What if it was 20 billion?

What if it was 30 billion?

There does come a delineation point where you feel like the returns are going to erode such that you would pass on an opportunity.

But I'd say by and large, if you're the one instigating these rounds and you're the one that's preempting these rounds, you can kind of help figure out what the right price is for a company at any given moment.

And I do think you want to think about it last because, again, these generational companies, it's almost never too late for them.

Do you have any internal monikers or frameworks for like... I think the more simplistic way that we think about it, and again, this is not a hard and fast rule and it's more qualitative than anything, is if I invest in this round at this price and the company executes, do I want to put more at a higher price?

That's the litmus test.

It's to say, all right, say I invest in a company at 5 billion, and it does super well this year.

Is this a big enough idea?