Philippe Laffont
speaker
118 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Philippe Laffont’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Like, I'm sure it happens, but like off the top of my mind, it seems like a fraction of that, right? And then I also think that the private markets have become so sophisticated that in essence, like our private markets, public markets that just trade three times a year. Like, you know, these companies, they do these rounds, you know, once or twice, they're becoming pretty sophisticated.
They match buyers and sellers. And I think that's okay. And then the last piece, which I think that's a very bad piece for the four of us and all of us on this call and many of your listeners is that There's such a view that like large companies are bad and we got to bust them and we're not going to let them do any M&A. And as a result of that, small companies no longer get bought by big ones.
And for me, it's a disaster because if I fund small companies, but now you take away one of the best ways that I have to monetize my investments. Why should I invest in risky private companies? I can just buy the public one.
And so I'm really hoping that as part of this deregulatory move, and you guys and Saks will have way more influence than we, but to convince people that in my mind, the best way to create competition is to allow these large companies to fight against each other. And the battle between OpenAI and Google is the best way to do that, but not by telling Google not to buy something or-
Telling OpenAI not to buy something.
Oh, I think that to me, one of the best part of being an investor of venture capital is when you have a really big idea and it works out, it takes care of a lot of sins. You know, there's a little aspect like, would you like to play the lottery? If the lottery was capped, like, hey, if you win the lottery, you can't win more than 30 million dollars. 30 million is an insane amount of money.
But I read that there's some lottery guys who make 1 billion and 2 billion. And the reason why people are willing to bet so much and most people are willing to lose is they all think that they're going to have this one ticket that's worth a billion. And I think when you reduce the incentive, the financial incentive of, and I agree with Dave, success should be rewarded as much as possible.
But if you've done something wrong, then use the existing... to define what success is. I don't think you can cap because once you start capping and then what happens if the stock market goes down? Do you then have to just recap? But I agree with you. You bring up an interesting point, which is in these bundles, like Amazon Prime Bundle, Apple Bundle, There's a Costco bundle, right?
We seem to be living in this world of bundles where the stock market is willing to pay 40, 50 times earnings just for the membership fee. As long as whatever you do on the side, you basically make no money. Like Costco, I think, makes 100% of its money more or less on a membership fee and trades for 50, 60 times earnings. there is a limit to like how big the bundle is before you start dumping.
So I don't think I'm saying anything super interesting. I just hope that you don't cap the upside because that's what enables all of us to fund these new companies. The reason why all of you guys and me, we're willing to fund these companies, knowing that many of them are going to fail is the hope that you get the next open AI.
You know, when I look at that data, what I look at, if you just bring it back for one second, is ever since the 20 and 21, which were very high. If you look at 22, 23, 24, and now the 25, I'm like, How is this that it's worse than 04, 05, 06 that were normal years? How is this worse than 13 and 14 and 15? Yeah.
Correct.
She can't connect the dots. You know, she's like, I want people to not you know, play the lottery anymore. I don't care for them. She doesn't understand that our system is based on this risk-taking. And so, listen.
It's just like collateral damage. You know, one of the things I feel none of these people understand so well is like all the collateral damage. You think you're moving in one direction and all these dominoes sort of fall around you.
We're involved. But sorry, just one thing I would add because it makes what you said so much more powerful. On top of that, when these people die, most of them gave all their money away to foundation, which is something very different between the US and Europe. In Europe, a lot of the wealth, and in many other countries outside of Europe, the wealth basically continues for generations.
In America, these people build companies, create new companies, invest in new companies, coach new companies, mentor new companies, and when they die, all that money goes to foundations that continue to promote and do some of the work that governments were doing. Finally, how great is it that some foundations are competing with the government to decide what needs to be done?
Well, you guys are nice to ask, and A couple of you have tweeted some nice things about it. So I really appreciate it.
I loved it. Let me tell you, a bit the story behind it, right? So I was like, on one hand, you've got private funds. They're only available for the super, super rich. Like you gotta be like, you know, a super duper accredited investor. You put your money in there and you might not see anything for 10 years. And then for me as a GP, every three years, I need to raise a new one of these funds.
So God forbid, we have one fund that doesn't work and we raise the next one or not, right? So that was on one side of it. And then on the public side, what basically is going on in the public is very strange. But in essence, the Black Rocks of the world and the vanguards of the world and make it that almost everybody wants to invest in an index.
And as a result of that, the people who are still active managers, they're all basically closet indexers because the risk of being wrong, you do better for 10 years and then you do worse for one year, you're out. So basically the public market, everybody wants to index, which is, I think why the max seven, you know, is so big and stuff like that.
Showing 61–80 of 118 · page 4 of 6
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