On the record about
4 people · 15 quotes · 1 Oct 2010 to 4 Aug 2026
2 of 4 lanes rest on fewer than 5 quotes and are marked thin. Offsets are days from the middle first-quote date, 2 Oct 2024 — a date, and nothing else. It is not a claim about who reached a view first.
Gurley states that only three out of 25-30 IPOs this year were unprofitable at launch.
“I think of the 25 or 30 this year, three were not profitable at the time of going out.”
Gurley identifies an angel glut a year ago with companies raising $5 million in seed unable to get Series A.
“In fact, starting about a year ago I think there was probably what you might call an angel glut of companies who had maybe raised one, two, we've seen companies with $5,000,000 of convertible seed money. That's a lot of seed money who can't raise series A.”
Gurley says venture cycles are sawtooth-shaped, not sine curves, with slow reflexive risk-on periods.
“Risk on is a very slow process and it's reflexive so it grows and grows and grows and grows”
Gurley says massive multiple contraction happened across the industry, not due to company performance but market repricing.
“Like, it just happened. There was massive multiple contraction writ large across the industry, and the companies have to navigate it.”
Patel reports H100 rental prices have dropped from $3-4 per hour to $2.15 or less, approaching natural cost of $1.40.
“An hour. Right? For shorter term or midterm deals. Right now, it's like, if you want a six month deal, you could get, like, $2.15 or less.”
Gurley observes venture's loose money trend has persisted beyond the zero interest rate period unexpectedly.
“There's been a trend in venture recently. Recently. I I thought thought it it was was the the zero zero interest interest rate rate thing that caused it, but it's sustaining beyond that.”
Patel says cloud pricing varies by three times due to poor marketing, sales, and stranded compute capacity.
“Like the the cost difference between different clouds can be as much as three x. Right? Because a lot of these clouds are bad at marketing, bad at sales, stranded compute.”
Gurley argues the belief that AI is the biggest platform shift ever is driving current market behavior.
“I think post LLM, the world believes, and I think this is my fifth point or something, but the world believes AI is the biggest platform shift in anyone's lifetime.”
Patel compares GPU purchasing process to buying drugs, calling people to ask about availability and pricing.
“my opinion on how you buy GPUs is that it's like buying cocaine or any other drug. This is described to me, not me.”
Patel compares buying GPUs to buying cocaine with informal texts asking for availability and pricing.
“You call up a couple people. You text a couple people. You ask, yo. How much you got? What's the price? It's like Exactly. This is fucking like, buy drugs. Like oh, sorry. Sorry.”
Gerstner argues Google captured 98% of all upside in search despite having 20 competitors with good technology.
“20 competitors in search. They all have pretty good technologies, but Google consumed 98% of all the upside ever associated with search.”
Patel reports five or six neo clouds have already gone out of business in just a few years.
“There's I believe five or six that have already gone out of business. It's only been a few years. Right. Right?”
Gurley estimates 98% of venture capitalists are exclusively focused on AI investments right now.
“From where I sit, 98% of venture capitalists are only looking at AI and they're AI all day long, they don't wanna see another business”
Gerstner asserts there is no evidence the gap between commodity and frontier AI models is collapsing.
“People are speculating that the intelligence gap between that commodity stuff and the frontier stuff is going to collapse to the point that people won't pay for the frontier stuff.”
Baker notes seven-month GPU rental price increase from mid-$2 to nearly $4 per hour is surprising.
“And they're hoping seven months later to pay just under $4. Like, you know, just you hear this today. And that's, like, that's pretty crazy”