We've heard a lot about VC FOMO when it comes
to getting in on hot tech deals, turns out
it also applies to getting money out. I caught
up with legendary venture capitalist, Bill Gurley, who's
been investing for 20 years through multiple cycles. I
asked him what happens when a bank run moves at
Twitter speed. What benchmark do? Did you take
your money out? Did you tell founders to take
money? We did not kind of run for the
doors either when the dust settles. How bad does
this get? Like, what is the wreckage?
Look, I don't know. I mean, let's
say the fed hadn't stepped up in like a whole
bunch of startups lost their venture dollars. That would
have been an event that I think would have been
way worse than no one. Like that would have
been catastrophic. In 99 every single major Wall Street
firm opened the office on Sand Hill Road. They
were paying attention to everything. Everyone was in on
010203, they left like the media left the Wall
Street firms left like they just kind of moved on
and they focused on other things. And it got
super quiet and I actually love that environment. It's
a great environment to work and I hate the manic
stuff, but we're not there yet. What's your
advice to startups in this environment? My advice is
pretty simple, which is that thing we lived through
the last three or four years. That was the
fantasy Sometimes I hear are gonna go, well,
as soon as things go back to the way they
were, that's a catastrophically disastrous, like mindset,
like, assume this is normal. And so unfortunately
, there are a lot of people that, that
mark themselves to market in their brain, you know
, at the top of the bubble, but it's
gone, even if something like that happens again,
it's 15 years in the future. So you've got
to recognize what the reality is today, what your
company really might be worth today.