Thomas

They ran over the time deadline for the bid.

They came in late.

They were quite rude on calls.

They were like, oh, your business kind of sucks.

And he didn't like that.

So no, it was not technically, if you did not know anything about the context of the deal at all, and you just looked at top nine numbers, technically he did not accept the highest number.

And I would say of all the 1200 deals we've done, not every, a lot of founders don't actually go for the highest offer, which many people would not necessarily believe.

They think you always take the highest number.

In his case, it was one of the better offers, but not the highest.

No.

It's also me, particularly in this case, as a transition period, he wanted to make sure he liked Kevin, liked the team, and they get on well.

Yes.

So the question was, public markets, how are they affecting private markets?

Elevator pitch, or the short answer is that they're not.

Companies like Stripe that just raised a down round at like 50% of their last valuation, $50 billion versus $95 billion.

The reality is that does not affect Josh in Auckland, New Zealand, who's built his business to a couple of million profit a year, growing consistently.

There's, for perspective, $3 trillion of dry powder of private equity at the moment in the U.S.

alone.

Every single one of you could have a...

Every single person in this room or at the entire conference could have a life-changing exit, and he wouldn't even make a dent in that $3 trillion.