I think Chamath's point is right, though. There is so much more liquidity available through access to retail and international market participants in a public setting than there is in a private setting. And it is because of this liquidity premium and the easy access to putting capital in. It's just extraordinary how much, as I've watched close friends and companies and companies I've invested in, and I'm sure you guys have done the same, transition from private to public, the valuation jump is extraordinary on a metrics basis.

So whatever the metric might be, you get public, there is this flurry of market participation. And as a result, it drives up. There's a multiple expansion. Wait, wait. I thought... Your BSPR, sorry, can I just say something? That's such an important, smart thing that Friedberg said. So Jason, for example, all of us, we're all still in the private markets.

And I'm not trying to take away from the private markets, but what David said is so important. If you used to look at a SaaS deal, you'd price that SaaS deal 10 times ARR. Then there's a little bit of inflation, the rates go up, the prices that people pay go up.

Now all of a sudden we're paying 12 times, 15 times. Now it's 20 times if you're growing 100% rate over year. So what's happened? The market has become more efficient and the excess return is getting eaten up. And so you're like, "Okay, well, that's still really good." And you wait four, five, six years and you think you're going to get paid.

The crazy thing is once that company transitions to the public markets, I mean, all of a sudden, if you actually turn the investor base over and you actually create a float so that public market guys can buy it, they'll pay 30 times. That's right. 35 times, 40 times. So there's a massive multiple expansion.

So companies should be going public sooner. If you think about this, if I'm trying to raise money for one of my companies, I'm going to call on my 10, 20, 30 friends that I know that are investors in private markets and say, "Hey guys, do you want to look at this company?" And maybe I'll get two or three interested parties and maybe we'll kind of agree on what a fair valuation would be.

If I could take that same company and instantly make it available to a million investors, and all I need to do, by the way, is raise $10 million. All I need is some small number of them to write a couple of hundred dollar check. And I'm able to fill that round out.

The valuation as a result of the liquidity available in that market is so much higher because everyone's going to... There's going to be much more participation in bidding. And so, you know, what I think Chamath has tapped into with the SPAC vehicle and what Robinhood is realizing, and I don't think that we all talk about this enough, but there's this massive, massive, massive market of international investors, of small, of international retail investors who are now rushing into US equities.

Freeberg, didn't we see that in the ICO craze as well? I think if we took anything from the ICO craze, it was the global appetite for risk and the dot-com boom before that. And I think we have to see that in the market. And I think that's the thing that's really important.

And I think that's the thing that's really important. And I think that's the thing that's really important. Everybody's copying you down the SPAC path, Chamath. At this point, I had Desktop Metal as an early angel investment that just SPACed. I did the pipe too. I co-led the pipe. Thank you.

Yeah. And then they told me that. Thank you for the markup. And I've been hearing, if I'm getting inbound as an angel investor from... I literally got a cold email from some high-profile people and they're like, "Hey, do you have anything for us to SPAC?" I mean, this is like the third or fourth time people are coming down to my dipshit level of, "Hey, do you have anything for us to SPAC?" I'm like, "No, we don't." And they're like, "No, we don't." And I'm like, "No, we don't." And they're like, "No, we don't." And I'm like, "No, we don't." And they're like, "No, we don't." And I'm like, "No, we don't." And I'm like, "No, we don't." And I'm like, "Can you introduce us to the calm guys?

Can you introduce them to Robinhood?" And I'm like, "I think you can go direct to them." But what is your take on how many SPACs have been created since you literally single-handedly restarted the SPAC movement, Chamath? I don't think you've ever gone on record about this. I'm really proud of what we did.

When we created this thing two years ago, I said I want to basically create a new way of doing IPOs. I called it IPO 2.0. I reserved IPO A through Z on the NYSE. I hope to fulfill that, and I think I will. But taking a step back for a second, in the year 2000, there were 8,000 public companies in America on the American stock exchanges.

And in the year 2020, there are 4,000. So we've shrunk in half the number of public companies while we're still doing IPOs. And that's a huge step forward. And I think that's a huge step forward. And I think that's a huge step forward. And I think that's a huge step forward.

Well, at the same time, we've 10x the amount of capital and the number of people. So we don't have a large enough surface area in the public markets. That's why companies are better off going public because they're going to have a much more receptive audience of people that are dying to own growth of any kind.

What's the earliest and the median that people should go public? So here's the thing. So if you're one of 30 companies in a venture portfolio that's growing at 50 plus percent, you're one of 30. But when you go public, you're one of one. When you're growing 50, 60%, you become very unique all of a sudden.

You're a 1% kind of a company. You're an outlier. And so you get treated incredibly well. So that's the backdrop. I think a company should be going public around year five, year six. What revenue footprint? About 50 million. At 50 million, when they're doubling, I think that's a huge step forward.

And then when they're doubling, I think that they should be going up. And it allows them to build capital slowly. It allows them to basically contain control. It minimizes dilution. I think it's a really powerful model. And then on the number of SPACs, what I would say is I think it's really good that the market is getting diversified.

I think what's going to happen is the thing with SPACs is it's going to be no different than in some ways the banks that preceded us, which is that there's going to be a distribution. You can go to Goldman Sachs, and that'll mean one thing. You can go to Merrill Lynch or B of A or UBS or Jefferies.

It'll mean other things. You can go to Allen and Company. It'll mean yet another different set of things. And I'm sure there's going to be an organization that is all about cost. Some is going to be all about relationships. So I just think that's going to be the distribution.

My personal perspective, it's probably us and maybe one or two other people who really dominate the space. And I'll tell you the only reason why I say that. I think it's going to be a distribution. I think it's going to be a distribution. I think it's going to be a distribution.

I think it's going to be a really important when these people try to get these SPACs done, what they're going to realize is it's really hard. And it's hard for a couple of reasons. Number one is you have to marry operational insight and public market sophistication. And the founder will get really smart about being able to figure out whether this person is just a financial arbitrage or if the person has enough operational experience to deeply understand the business.

Why? You have to translate it to the public markets well. That's one huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, I think that's one huge thing that I think that people will will start, we'll start to hone in on. Anyways, there's a bunch of other things. But are you now competing with the sacks the sacks agree with the 50 million?

Yeah, sure. Um, I'm cool with that. You know, I invest well before that. So I'd be I'd be happy for you probably have a bigger portfolio $50 million investments. Yeah, it is. It's great for for for me and Jason, and I you know, I think Jumauf deserves a ton of credit one on one.

It is I don't know if all the listeners are aware of this, but the SPAC things become a huge wave. There's a ton of people creating them. Kevin Hart says a new one Reid Hoffman has a new one. There you're the East Coast hedge fund guys, pink us and and then the East Coast hedge funds like Bill Ackman, wherever they're all creating them.

So Jumauf has really started a wave here. And I think the appeal of a SPAC to a founder, I'll put in a plug of why I think it's a good idea for a founder consider this is because you essentially what founders are used to is doing, you know, private rounds, right?

You agree on a on an amount raised and evaluation, and it's a percent dilution and you're done. That's it. And that's simple, right? And when you IPO and need to raise money, it's not like that you have to then work with an investment bank, they'll put together a book you do like a roadshow, you do this whole dog and pony thing, you don't know how much money you're gonna get at the end of that process or what the valuations gonna be.

And then on top of that, we know statistically Bill Gurley's published all the stats. And then you have a lot of people who are going to be like, Oh, Bill Gurley's published all the stats, the investment banks are going to rip you off. So you know, so that what a SPAC does is it prices like a late stage private round, you disagree with a SPAC promoter on evaluation and amount raised.

And then on top of it, you get kind of a direct listing along with it. Now all of a sudden, you start trading as a public company. And so a SPAC is like a combination direct listing plus private round. And I think that's going to be appealing to a lot of founders, as they start to discover the SPAC.

It's going to feel more like doing a Series D than it does a roadshow. And I think that comfort level for somebody like Robinhood or Calm or DataStax or Thumbtack or any of these companies that you and I are investors in. Every company in your portfolio. I'm just, listen, I got two IPOs in two years.

This is I think this is going to be the new thing for early stage investors is we're not going to count unicorns anymore. We're going to count SPACs. We're going to count public listings, right? And, and I think that's probably better. By the way, the other the other thing that I'll say to founders is one is I think you need to you need to think about do these people have the combination of operational and financial acumen in the public markets and investing experience in the public markets and the operational credibility to describe the business and I think you can trade off one for the other if one is so deep, meaning if Warren Buffett was doing his back, you'd say, well, he has no operational experience, but he's so credible in the public markets, then, you know, that's all that matters.

But you need to be super, super deep in one or have a really brilliant and thoughtful level of credibility in the public's meaning an early stage investor who isn't married to somebody who can basically say, I know how hedge funds work, I've made them money, and I'm going to make them more money, and mutual funds, etc, is troublesome.

The second thing is for founders, you have to really make sure you understand what is in it for the person that's doing this back. I mean, in every deal i write a minimum of 100 million dollars personally and that's a lot and so i get in the game i feel very much at risk and so i take a lot of time to make sure these things go well and then the third is that for the spac person what i'll tell them is they are going to find that there's a bunch of landmines and i'm not going to you know say it up front because i think it'll be fun for them to find out themselves along the way but these things are hard the first The first one took me two and a half years.

They're hard.