Sam Jacobs

But in a 0% interest rate environment, that's not true.

Any optionality on the future is equal to the value of today.

If you think there's even the slightest chance that you can generate $100 million in cash flow

in 2055, in a zero interest rate environment, it makes sense to invest against that reality.

And that's fundamentally why there was quote unquote growth at any cost.

And that's why the equities markets were so inflated, because there is a direct relationship.

It's not perfect, but there is a direct relationship between the value of equity, right, and the discount rate that you're applying to it, which is effectively the cost of money.

So in that world, and we were

we fell victim to that world in a way.

Because what happens when you take in all that capital is that the race for market share becomes the preeminent and predominant race.

And what we saw over the course of the last couple of years is that all of the companies were driven

by investors determining the outcomes because we needed to deploy that capital.

And when you deploy that capital and you're burning capital, when you're spending more than you make, at some point, one way or the other, the people that own the company are the investors.

Now, what happened over the last two years as the Fed and other central banks have raised interest rates is that we've shifted to a different world.

Again, mathematically, as we shift into a different world,

the value of dollars today becomes much more valuable than dollars tomorrow or dollars in 10 years, right?

That's one of the things that happens.

The other thing that happens is that efficiency becomes more valuable because again, profit becomes more valuable because again, money isn't free.

Profit becomes more valuable.

And as a consequence of profit becoming more valuable, maybe we look at the relationship between growth rate and profit.