Scott Wilson discusses investment discipline in venture capital

Know their portfolio companies relatively well, and we'll start making our own judgment calls on what we think the quality of the underlying portfolio is early on. And if we, if we think there's a big disconnect on, you know, between our view of the portfolio and the partner's view of the portfolio, then, you know, we won't stick around. But that's super rare. I mean, typically we have some view before we invest. When you review those decisions to not do a fund, what is the dominant reason? What's the number one most frequent reason why you will churn discipline around valuation? Wow, that's bold. But it's bold because you don't know with the greatest of respects. And so the best companies often look expensive at the time, but very cheap in hindsight. And so for you to take a snapshot decision and say that company is overpriced is bold, close to it being done? Yeah, I mean, it's typical. It's not just one example. Like, we had one partner that I'm not sure he found a hundred times revenue deal that he was willing to turn down, like it just didn't exist. And for something to trade at a hundred times revenue, it has to be, you know, an exciting company. I get that. But for us, like, that's not what we want our capital to be used for. We want discipline around valuation. You know, and you mentioned Leaf Excel. Like, you know, I think he's super pragmatic. He'll obviously, you know, pay up. And he's participated in some of these great companies that are huge winners. But he's also very pragmatic about, you know, when things get too frothy, stepping away. Do you think we should give managers forgiveness, patience for deploying funds much faster than they said they would? Scott, me and you are both old enough to know that every manager says three years, and every manager right now is coming back 12 to 18 months later saying, scott, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, but it's the best time ever to be investing. It's the best time ever. New intelligence, Intelligence. Should we give them forgiveness? You know, if we think that they're deploying capital at really high returns, we have no problem with really fast deployment. And if we think if they're deploying capital at poor returns or poor expected value, then we don't care how fast it's deployed is what I would say. We have a bias for smaller funds. We'd much rather have someone who raises a billion dollar fund when they could raise 4 billion and comes back every 18 months than someone who raises 10 billion and comes back every three years. We just think the ability to write like a small check in a venture portfolio and have that be a super meaningful outcome for the whole portfolio. A fund returner is much more.