Ramtin Naimi

You keep people satisfied with liquidity.

I think that's very good from a company building perspective.

I think it's problematic from a venture returns perspective.

I mean, no LP is interested in getting liquidity in 3% to 5% installments.

So I do think there needs to be a solution to that.

There is seemingly a new swath of continuation vehicles popping up in Silicon Valley.

So it seems like there will be ways for people to get large sums of liquidity and the venture managers get to maintain their basis and their position in these companies.

So I think it'll all net itself out, but I don't think the end result is ultimately these companies are all just going to go public.

I think they've all found a hack, which is your top 100 performers today, if you give them all instant liquidity on their position tomorrow, 92 of them probably might not be your top performers tomorrow.

If you want these companies to continue running circles around their public counterparts, it's not like winning a lottery.

What was the instance with Google?

Something like over 100 people made over $100 million.

92 of them were never heard of again.

And then the other eight ended up becoming VCs who wanted to make more money than that.

So I think that's the risk you run into with that liquidity is people win these lottos.

And these companies are so large right now that that is the type of liquidity that the early hires and senior management of those companies.

On a business standpoint, it was probably Ariane Shute giving me that job at Core Innovation Capital.

I actually look at that one single point in my life that had I not landed a job at a venture capital firm when I was flat broke with nothing to my name, where would I have ended up?

Would I have just gotten a job somewhere?

There's a million scenarios that I can point to where I wouldn't have ended up where I am today.