On the record about
4 people · 10 quotes · 15 Jul 2021 to 2 Mar 2026
4 of 4 lanes rest on fewer than 5 quotes and are marked thin. Offsets are days from the middle first-quote date, 26 Mar 2022 — a date, and nothing else. It is not a claim about who reached a view first.
Rowan identifies hybrid as a $30 billion business offering mid-teens returns with lower risk than opportunistic strategies.
“This thing called hybrid, which is 30,000,000,000, is actually really interesting because it is neither yield nor opportunistic. It is never going to be the highest rate of return.”
Gerstner says he won't invest late-stage now due to lack of price discovery, only early-stage at low valuations.
“You couldn't pry a late stage dollar out of my hand right now because I don't think we have real price discovery going on.”
Rowan believes hybrid strategies offer the best risk-reward with downside protection and equity upside in uncertain times.
“You're getting downside protection because the world is uncertain from a geopolitical and an economic point of view. You have enough equity upside that you should have pretty good returns.”
Gurley explains venture firms must maximize upside because IRR depends on hot cycle performance, which may accelerate collapses.
“And that's where we came up with this phrase that the best way to protect yourself against the downside is to enjoy every last bit of the upside.”
Gurley states the best downside protection in venture capital is fully capturing the upside.
“the best way to protect yourself against the downside is to enjoy every last bit of the upside.”
Marks says credit instruments now offer equity-type returns with high single to low double digit yields.
“Today, you can get equity type returns from what we call credit instruments, loans, corporate corporate loans, loans for buyouts.”
Marks says beating competitors requires either more winners or fewer losers, rarely both simultaneously.
“I can have more of the things that go up a lot than you do or less of the things that go down a lot than you do.”
Gerstner says now is the time to find the 10% of beaten-down software companies that will benefit from AI.
“90% of the companies that are down deserve to be down. Find the 10 that got thrown out with the bathwater. Find the 10%, right, that are going to benefit from AI.”
Marks frames the AI investment choice as binary moonshot bets versus incremental gains in established tech companies.
“Or do you want to invest in a great tech company, which is already existing and making a lot of money where AI could be incremental, but not life changing?”
Gerstner says Altimeter's investment thesis for two years has been correlation to intelligence improvements.
“The overarching theme now for two years at Altimeter is we wanna be positively correlated to improvements in intelligence.”